Written for geopolitical-risk and economic-exposure work: it traces a mechanism, not a market view.
The Strait of Hormuz was never blocked along its length and its legal regime never changed. What closed it to commerce was the withdrawal and repricing of war-risk cover, followed by charterers declining the voyage. Commercial risk did what interdiction did not.
How to read the grades
- ConfirmedDocumented as having occurred, with sources.
- Plausible exposureA mechanism Vigil assesses as likely; not documented as having occurred.
- Unconfirmed scenarioNamed because it is worth watching. Not asserted.
A step can never be graded more firmly than the step it depends on: a consequence cannot be better established than its cause. That rule is enforced when this site is built, not applied by hand — a chain that broke it would fail the build rather than publish.
- Trigger
Armed conflict in and around the Strait of Hormuz from 28 February 2026
- Affected asset, route or regionConfirmed
Commercial transit of the Strait of Hormuz, through which around 20 million barrels a day of crude and products moved in the 2025 baseline, together with close to a fifth of world LNG exports.
Documented as having occurred, with sources.
- Operational disruptionConfirmed
War-risk cover was withdrawn or repriced. Named protection-and-indemnity clubs issued 72-hour notices terminating existing war-risk extensions with effect from 5 March 2026, and replacement cover was offered at rates one specialist source records as roughly $30,000 per week against about $25,000 per year previously. The International Maritime Organization stated on 24 April that there was no safe transit anywhere in the strait.
Documented as having occurred, with sources.
- Exposed sector or commodityConfirmed
Commercial traffic collapsed. Tanker transits fell by more than 80% on specialist reporting, and by late April approximately 20,000 seafarers were stranded aboard around 1,600 vessels unable to move.
Documented as having occurred, with sources.
- Broader economic significanceConfirmed
Access can therefore be lost without a blockade. The legal position did not change, the water was never sealed, and the strait stopped functioning anyway — which is why this module models legal, physical and commercial access as three separate questions rather than as one open-or-closed state.
Documented as having occurred, with sources.
Sectors and commodities exposed
Named as plain labels rather than a controlled vocabulary, so this list cannot drift from the commodity names the module's economy section already uses.
What remains unknown
- The PRE-CRISIS insurance baseline is not established. One specialist source gives Hormuz additional war-risk premiums at 0.2% of hull value before February 2026; a second gives roughly 0.001%. The two differ by two orders of magnitude and neither states its basis clearly enough to reconcile. This chain therefore publishes NO multiplier, ratio or percentage increase, because the denominator is exactly what is unknown.
- Wartime rates are reported at 1% of hull value within 48 hours of the strikes, later 4% for a seven-day period and 7.5-10% across the tanker segment. These are broker and trade-press figures, not published market data.
- THE PRE-WAR WAR-RISK PREMIUM BASELINE IS NOT ESTABLISHED, AND NO MULTIPLE IS THEREFORE PUBLISHED. Wartime quoted rates are carried with their dates and sources. The denominator they would be divided by — what Hormuz transit cover cost before February 2026 — has not been obtained from an underwriting or broking source, and the figures in circulation do not agree. Every "premiums rose N times" formulation therefore stays out of this module until a dated pre-war series exists, because a ratio with an unknown denominator is not a measurement. The mechanism is described; the arithmetic is not attempted.
Readings the evidence also supports
- Traffic may have fallen because masters and charterers judged the physical risk directly, with insurance following rather than causing the withdrawal. The mechanism would look the same from outside. What the record establishes is the sequence and the effect, not that the insurance market was the originating cause.
Listed because the record's own assessment is not the only one its sources permit — not as a hedge on the assessment above.
War-risk pricing
Whether cover for Hormuz transits becomes available at rates charterers will accept — the mechanism that would reopen the strait commercially.
Transit counts
Whether transits recover toward the 2025 baseline rather than toward wartime levels.
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Assessed as of2026-09Last reviewed2026-09-04