Hormuz transits fall to a two-month low, but the bypass routes holding Middle East exports together are now the ones under strain

Commodity Insider Daily Brief · Oct 8, 2026 · 11m

Only seven commodity vessels crossed the Strait on 6 October, the fewest since 23 July, per Kpler data cited by Reuters, while crude moving directly through the chokepoint slipped about 27% from its wartime peak to roughly 10.1 mn b/d. Total Middle East crude exports have nonetheless stayed near pre-war levels because loadings from the Gulf of Oman coast and the Red Sea have more than doubled to about 6.7 mn b/d. The market has not repaired the chokepoint; it has routed around it, and the connectors doing that work are increasingly the exposure that matters.