Hormuz Oil Flows Reach 17 Million Barrels a Day as Goldman's Recovery Ceiling Gives Way
Throughput has beaten Goldman Sachs's 70% forecast, but rerouted pipelines and a fragile ceasefire keep the strait short of its pre-war 21-million-barrel-a-day capacity.
Oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz have reached 17 million barrels a day, Bloomberg reported, putting throughput at roughly 81% of the 21 million barrels a day the route carried in 2022 and above the ceiling Goldman Sachs analysts had projected when the recovery began. ICE Brent crude front-month was at $95.57 a barrel on Thursday (2026-09-03).1,3
Goldman Sachs warned in June that flows might only recover to 70% of pre-war levels, around 13 million barrels a day, achievable by the end of July (2026-07-31), Bloomberg reported. The 17 million figure clears that estimate by 4 million barrels a day. But it still leaves the same volume offline versus the strait's pre-conflict average.3
The recovery traces to a preliminary ceasefire that US and Iranian presidents signed on Wednesday (2026-06-17), under which Iran agreed to reopen the strait in exchange for Washington lifting all sanctions against Tehran, including UN sanctions. Since that deal, Saudi Arabia has exported 34 million barrels in total, oilprice.com reported.3,4
The pace of the return was visible in the first week of July. On Monday (2026-07-06), as many as 12 million barrels on six tankers exited through Hormuz, accompanied by chemical carriers, a vehicle carrier, and a cargo ship bound for Japan, Reuters reported. By Tuesday (2026-07-07), two fully loaded very large crude carriers carrying a combined 4 million barrels of Saudi crude were approaching the strait, bound for Japan, Reuters said.4
Yet the constraints Goldman flagged have not disappeared. Some producers diversified their export routes during the crisis and show few signs of reversing course. Saudi Aramco's East-West pipeline connecting Gulf fields to the Red Sea port of Yanbu now averages about 7.5 million barrels a day, a figure that reflects deliberate rerouting. The UAE has been moving volumes through its 1.5-million-barrel-a-day pipeline to the Fujairah terminal on the Gulf of Oman. The EIA estimates roughly 3.5 million barrels a day of effective unused bypass capacity remains available across these routes.3,1
Dark shipping adds a further layer of uncertainty. Bloomberg's June 18 (2026-06-18) report noted that visible flows through the strait stood at just 1.3 million barrels a day, with another 1.6 million barrels a day moving out of the Gulf of Oman on tankers that had disabled their geolocation transponders to avoid detection. The headline recovery figure does not capture what is moving without tracking.3
US military intervention has also been shaping the corridor. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said on Friday (2026-06-12) that the military was escorting ships carrying approximately 7 million barrels a day through Hormuz, representing roughly half of pre-war throughput at that point.2
On the demand side, the arithmetic cuts the other way. The IEA cut its 2026 global oil demand forecast by 510,000 barrels a day versus its previous month's estimate, projecting a contraction of 1.6 million barrels a day against 2025 levels. OPEC lowered its demand-growth forecast to 580,000 barrels a day. The IEA sees the annual contraction easing from 4.9 million barrels a day in the second quarter to 2.8 million barrels a day in the third, before demand returns to growth in the fourth quarter, with 2.4 million barrels a day of growth expected in 2027.5
That demand overhang pulled Brent sharply lower on Thursday (2026-08-13), when ICE Brent crude front-month fell 42 cents to $88.56 after a 17.4-million-barrel build in US crude inventories — the largest weekly build since January 2023. By Thursday (2026-09-03), Brent had recovered to $95.57. The demand forecasts have not improved.5
Goldman's structural view remains that Hormuz throughput may never fully return to 21 million barrels a day, because producers who built alternative capacity during the crisis have little incentive to abandon it. The 17 million figure puts flows at Goldman's stated ceiling. The clearest gauge of whether the recovery goes further is the transponder-dark fleet: as long as 1.6 million barrels a day is still moving out of the Gulf of Oman with AIS disabled, the corridor's rehabilitation remains partial, whatever the headline flow figure says.3