On September 12, an unidentified vessel was struck by an unknown projectile while transiting the Strait of Hormuz. A fire broke out on board, and the crew evacuated before UK Maritime Trade Operations logged the incident the following day. It was one more entry in a conflict that began in February, 2026 and still has no end in sight.
Six months in, total transits through the strait’s southern corridor sit at roughly 20% of pre-conflict levels. A recent tracking update found transits rising more than 30% percent from their low point to 114 crossings, but that’s still well short of the roughly 130 ships a day seen before the conflict, and the figure likely understates real traffic given how many vessels are now going dark. Yet much of the freight industry continues to act as though the constraint is temporary, isolated or already priced in. From the freight side, the problem is that many supply chain teams are responding in one of two ways, and both leave them exposed.
Analysts now put total Gulf oil exports, including “dark crossings” made with transponders switched off, at roughly 15 to 16 million barrels a day, about two-thirds of pre-war volumes, though the U.S. Energy Secretary claimed shipments were nearly back to normal. Oil is still finding its way out, but not on the same cadence, not with the same risk profile, and not at the same cost.
Two Common Reactions, Both Miss the Point
The first group has decided this does not touch them. Washington insists the strait is open and Brent crude hasn’t spiked the way many expected back in March, so the easy conclusion is that nothing has really changed.
The second group is tearing up contracts and rerouting freight that wasn’t anywhere near the Gulf when they saw a bad headline. That kind of reaction undermines true analysis, damages carrier relationships, and burns margin chasing exposure that was never real to begin with.
Both groups are reacting to the news cycle instead of their own freight.
Insurance Matters More Than the Oil Price
The number that should matter most to shippers was never the price of oil. Insurance and lead-time volatility hit long before a barrel price moves, and they have been quietly reshaping shipping costs for months.
Before this conflict started, war-risk insurance on a Hormuz transit ran about 0.15% to 0.25% of a vessel’s hull value. On a $150 million tanker, that works out to roughly $225,000 to $375,000 per trip. Within weeks of the first strikes, that premium jumped to 3% to 10%, which on the same tanker can mean up to a $15 million bill for a single transit.
Rates have moved with the fighting since then, but pricing doesn’t reset simply because political announcements suggest conditions have improved. A ceasefire may pause the market, but it doesn’t erase the risk that memory insurers and carriers have already built into their models.
That distinction matters for anyone moving freight connected to this region, even a few tiers removed from it, because the strait doesn’t have to shut down completely for a shipper to feel the effects. It only has to stay unpredictable long enough for insurers, carriers and customers to price that unpredictability into every contract permanently, and that repricing has already happened. Most shippers simply haven’t gone looking for it in their own agreements yet.
This Isn’t Temporary
Zooming out, the picture only grows more serious. The International Energy Agency has called this among the largest supply disruptions in the history of the global oil market. Iran and Oman are reportedly finalizing a separate shipping corridor as an alternative to the traditional route, and a shadow fleet of vessels is actively going dark and disguising destinations to avoid becoming targets. None of that reflects temporary conditions. Routing patterns, insurance markets and carrier risk appetite don’t shift this much over six months, only to snap back the moment a ceasefire gets announced.
That’s the case for treating this as a standing feature of the network rather, than a headline to wait out, and it’s why the response needs to be a discipline, not a one-time reaction.
What to Actually Do About It
A great starting point is to map the actual exposure: which lanes, products and customers touch Gulf-transiting freight, whether directly or two tiers back in a supply chain that most teams have never had reason to trace before now.
From there, the measured response and the panicked one need to be kept separate. Pulling back from Gulf-adjacent capacity across the board because one lane got expensive doesn’t address the underlying problem, whereas identifying the specific lanes carrying real risk premium today and renegotiating those, while leaving the rest of the network untouched, does.
Building a second carrier relationship on any lane relying on a single carrier is worth doing before it becomes necessary, since the leverage to negotiate that kind of redundancy exists now and disappears the moment a rate spike forces the issue.
The same logic applies to insurance and rate conversations. Starting those now, while there’s still room to negotiate terms, beats waiting until after the next incident forces everyone into a market that has already reset.
The advantage will come from the unglamorous work of auditing lanes, renegotiating the right contracts and protecting carrier options while everyone else keeps refreshing the news. Audit your lanes, renegotiate critical risk terms, and secure backup capacity today.
Nicholas Shipe is director of premium transportation at Circle Logistics.