About this site
This site tracks daily ship transits through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway between Iran and Oman through which roughly 20% of global oil supply passes.
Data comes from the IMF PortWatch project, which derives daily transit counts from satellite AIS (vessel transponder) data. The dataset goes back to 2019. Counts are refreshed weekly by the IMF; this site re-pulls them daily.
Methodology
- Source: IMF PortWatch "Daily Chokepoint Transit Calls" dataset — chokepoint6 (Strait of Hormuz)
- Refresh: Pipeline runs daily at 06:00 UTC
- Vessel types: Tankers (oil/product/chemical), dry bulk, container, RoRo, general cargo
- Lag: PortWatch typically lags real-world events by 2–5 days
Caveats
- PortWatch counts port calls within the chokepoint geofence, not pure transits. The numbers are directionally meaningful but not a literal ship count.
- Some vessels disable AIS for security reasons. These would not appear in counts.
- Event annotations reflect the editorial judgment of this site's author about which dates matter most for context.
Support
This site is free and ad-free. If it's useful to you, please consider a donation — it helps cover the domain and the time to keep it running.