Hormuz Transit Volume Fell to 4.9 Million Bpd in Q2 as Alternative Routes Fill Up
EIA data shows the Hormuz closure wiped out 16.7 million barrels a day of throughput in six months, pushing alternative chokepoints to multiples of their pre-war flows.
Only 4.9 million barrels a day of crude and liquids passed through the Strait of Hormuz in the second quarter of 2026, according to EIA estimates, down from 21.6 million in the final quarter of 2025. The 16.7 million barrel-per-day drop reflects six months of near-total disruption since war between Iran, the US, and Israel broke out in late February (2026-02).6
The volumes that can no longer move through Hormuz have not disappeared. They are being diverted through alternative infrastructure and transit lanes that are now absorbing flows well beyond their prior operating ranges.6
Saudi Arabia's Red Sea terminal at Yanbu shows the pace of the shift most clearly. The port loaded around 240,000 barrels a day before the closure. By June (2026-06) it was processing 3.5 million — a fifteenfold increase built on Saudi Aramco diverting flows through the kingdom's East-West pipeline to bypass Gulf export terminals entirely.6
Rerouting is expensive. Reuters costed one Saudi cargo sent on the longer westbound route at roughly $1.6 million in additional fuel, with another $1 million in canal fees on top. Spread across millions of barrels a day, those costs accumulate into a sustained freight burden that producers and buyers are splitting in ways that vary by contract.6
Congestion is spreading to other narrow passages. The Turkish Straits, the Bosphorus and Dardanelles combined, handled 4.1 million barrels a day in the second quarter against 3.7 million in the first half of 2025. A separate transit strait tracked in the same analysis nearly doubled, from 4.2 million bpd in the first half of last year to 8.1 million in the second quarter of this year.6
Iran's production decline adds to the supply shortfall. OPEC data showed Iranian crude output fell by 19%, or 546,000 barrels a day, to 2.33 million bpd in May (2026-05), driven by the US naval blockade and the near-total Hormuz closure. Total OPEC crude production averaged 33.13 million bpd that month, down 185,000 bpd from April, with Iran accounting for the bulk of the decline.2
The IEA, in its August (2026-08-12) Oil Market Report, cut its 2026 global oil supply forecast by 4.3 million barrels a day and projected a global oil deficit of 1.8 million bpd for the third quarter. Global production remained around 9.4 million bpd below pre-war levels in June, even after the partial recovery in Hormuz shipments drove that month's output higher.4,3
There was a brief signal in early July (2026-07). IEA data showed Middle East oil loadings reaching 20 million barrels a day, close to pre-war levels, before falling back to 12 million bpd later in the month. The collapse that followed showed how quickly a partial-flow period can unwind.4
The EIA, in its August Short-Term Energy Outlook published August 11 (2026-08-11), raised its third-quarter Brent price forecast to $85 per barrel, citing continued severe Hormuz constraints. ICE Brent crude front-month stood at $93.60 per barrel as of August 23 (2026-08-23), $8.60 above that quarterly average forecast with several weeks of the quarter still to run.5
Gregory Brew, an Iran analyst at Eurasia Group, described the situation as of mid-June (2026-06-11) as nowhere near normal. "We're nowhere close to being there yet," he said. There had always been scope for ships to move through in small numbers, he noted, but volumes of 2 to 3 million barrels a day were far below what the strait handled before the war.1
The July (2026-07) spike to 20 million bpd followed almost immediately by a retreat to 12 million shows how unstable each partial-flow period has been. Alternative chokepoints are now running at multiples of their pre-war volumes, and any further disruption along those secondary routes, whether weather-related, geopolitical, or capacity-driven, would hit passages with no remaining headroom.4,6