Suez Canal Tanker Traffic Jumps 27% as Dual Chokepoint Threat Keeps Brent Above $100
With Hormuz closed and Houthis targeting Saudi tankers in the Red Sea, oil shippers have crowded back into Suez while analysts warn crude could reach $120.
The Suez Canal collected $505 million in revenues in July 2026, a 42% rise from $355 million in July 2025 and above the $438 million recorded in June 2026, as tanker operators rerouted cargoes away from the Red Sea, according to Egyptian statistics agency CAPMAS data cited by Bloomberg. The number of ships transiting the waterway in July reached 1,340, up 27% on the year. ICE Brent crude front-month was last quoted at $103.37 a barrel as of September 19.8
Behind that traffic surge are twin disruptions that have left Gulf producers with shrinking export options. Iran's decision to close the Strait of Hormuz, implemented more than three months before oilprice.com's June 8 (2026-06-08) analysis, severed the main Persian Gulf exit route and removed roughly 13 million barrels per day from effective global supply, that report estimated. Then, in the final days of July, Houthi rebels in Yemen began striking Saudi oil tankers and announced a maritime blockade of Saudi Arabia, threatening to close the one major alternative corridor still functioning.1,5
The tanker strikes pushed ICE Brent crude front-month futures up more than 6% to $100 a barrel on July 23 (2026-07-23), the highest since late May, according to RTE.ie. That capped five consecutive sessions of gains and marked a near one-third rebound from the month's low, Tempo.co reported.5,6
The volumes at risk through Bab el-Mandeb are substantial. Before the Houthi escalation, around 2.5 million barrels of Saudi oil per day were moving through the strait, according to Jorge Leon, Rystad Energy's senior vice president for geopolitical analysis. Saudi Arabia and the UAE were together using the Red Sea corridor to export around 6.8 million barrels per day — roughly half of normal Strait of Hormuz volumes — leaving them highly exposed once Houthi attacks intensified.6
Ship operators have already been repricing the exposure. The Amazon, a tanker owned by Dynacom Tankers Management that departed Yanbu laden with more than 1 million barrels of crude bound for India, diverted its passage to the Suez Canal, shipping fixtures showed. The rerouting adds voyage time and fuel costs. But the Suez option has a hard physical limit: supertankers cannot transit the canal, so any wholesale shift of large crude cargoes would require the Cape of Good Hope route, adding weeks to delivery times and driving freight rates significantly higher.3,1
Analyst assessments have been unambiguous. "It's a cacophony of bad news at the moment," said Sasha Foss of CSC Commodities, a division of Marex Group. A MarineTraffic analyst said on Wednesday, July 22 (2026-07-22), that the "Bab el-Mandeb risk picture is deteriorating." FX Empire's July 20 (2026-07-20) analysis assessed that a full closure of the strait could send crude to $120 a barrel, citing higher freight rates, increased fuel consumption, and the elimination of the Suez Canal option for the largest tankers as the key transmission channels.3,4,2
The bearish case rests on stockpiles accumulated during the Hormuz disruption. China's strategic reserve had exceeded 1.2 billion barrels and high volumes of crude remained on the water in floating storage, oilprice.com reported in June. Current positioning data for Dubai crude, the Middle Eastern sour benchmark, carries a bearish storage signal despite the headline supply risks — an indication that some market participants see existing inventory as a near-term ceiling on upside.1
Goldman Sachs expected prices to hold most of their July gains through August, backed by lower Middle Eastern output and seasonal summer travel demand, RTE.ie reported. New pipeline capacity to bypass the Hormuz closure is one option Gulf producers have explored, Deutsche Welle noted on July 17 (2026-07-17), but such projects take years and billions of dollars and provide no near-term relief to a market already running two choked corridors simultaneously.5,7
Monthly vessel counts through the Suez Canal are the clearest near-term barometer. July's 1,340 transits were already well above year-ago levels. A sustained rise would indicate operators have abandoned the Red Sea route entirely, compressing effective canal capacity and lifting voyage costs across the board. A tanker attack inside the Suez corridor itself — which has not yet occurred — would represent a materially different escalation from anything absorbed since the Hormuz closure began.8