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Energy, Utilities & Critical Minerals

Strait of Hormuz — Daily Tanker Transits

Tankers passing through the Strait of Hormuz each day, counted by IMF PortWatch from ship-tracking signals. The strait is the only sea route out of the Persian Gulf, carrying the oil and gas exports of the Gulf states.

Data status: Current
Official statisticSource figures as of October 16, 2026Sources & methods
Sources
IMF PortWatch (International Monetary Fund and University of Oxford)
Period covered
Jan 1, 2019 – Oct 11, 2026
Source figures as of
October 16, 2026
Geography
Strait of Hormuz, between Iran and Oman
Sector
Energy, Utilities & Critical Minerals
Seasonal adjustment
Not seasonally adjusted
Transformations
Views other than the level (changes, averages, volatility) are calculated by CK Economics from these figures
Revisions
Replaced with the source’s latest figures whenever it revises them.
Data status
Current
Limitations
Seasonal swings are left in: compare a period with the same period a year earlier.

Full method · Research standards

Key figures

CK estimateShips · calculated by CK Economics from International Monetary Fund data

Latest · Oct 11, 2026
1
28-day average −50 ships vs a year earlier1
5-year change
−53 ships
28-day average, against the 28 days to Oct 11, 20212
Record high
83
Sep 22, 20233
Record low
0
Mar 4, 2026 (and 61 other periods)3
Where the latest ranks
2nd pct.
Higher than 2% of the other 2,840 observations since Jan 1, 20194
  1. 1Average of the latest 28 days against the average of the same 28 days a year earlier; a single day swings too much to compare.
  2. 2Average of the latest 28 days against the same 28 days five and ten years earlier. No yearly growth rate is given for daily series.
  3. 3Highest and lowest published observations across the full history shown.
  4. 4Share of the other published observations that are lower than the latest one, rounded down.

Methodology

The number of tankers that transit the Strait of Hormuz each day. A transit is counted when a ship passes through the chokepoint's boundary. A passage that spans several days is counted once, and the same ship is not counted again within 48 hours. IMF PortWatch builds it from the Automatic Identification System (AIS) position signals that ships broadcast, as collected by the UN Global Platform, following Arslanalp, Koepke and Verschuur, "Tracking Trade from Space" (IMF Working Paper 2021/225). The series runs daily from 1 January 2019, with days in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). PortWatch adds new days about once a week, a few days behind, and may revise recent days as late signals arrive. Single days swing with ship arrivals, so totals over a week or a month show the trend more clearly. Values are as PortWatch publishes them (n_tanker). They count ships, not barrels: one very large crude carrier and one small product tanker count the same.

How we collect, check and project every dataset →

Source

International Monetary Fund, PortWatch, Daily Chokepoints Data (Strait of Hormuz, chokepoint6), with the University of Oxford; AIS data from the UN Global Platform: https://portwatch.imf.org/datasets/3da2b9ca97684916b75c4013f95d18ab_0/about — figures as published on 16 October 2026.

All data

2,841 observations, newest first · Ships

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PeriodValueChange y/y
Oct 11, 20261−38 ships
Oct 10, 20260−31 ships
Oct 9, 20260−30 ships
Oct 8, 20260−26 ships
Oct 7, 20261−55 ships
Oct 6, 20261−43 ships
Oct 5, 20261−71 ships
Oct 4, 20260−73 ships
Oct 3, 20260−55 ships
Oct 2, 20260−56 ships
Oct 1, 20260−72 ships
Sep 30, 20264−52 ships
Sep 29, 20260−70 ships
Sep 28, 20262−74 ships
Sep 27, 20261−59 ships
Sep 26, 20261−37 ships
Sep 25, 20262−24 ships
Sep 24, 20263−49 ships
Sep 23, 20261−52 ships
Sep 22, 20261−36 ships
Sep 21, 20260−51 ships
Sep 20, 20260−46 ships
Sep 19, 20261−36 ships
Sep 18, 20262−64 ships

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