US limits Hormuz tanker cover to two daily slots, FT reports

The International Energy Agency said Friday that crude losses had narrowed to just below 45%, pointing to bypass flows and U.S. military escorts. The Financial Times reported Saturday that the U.S. naval coordination centre had already told maritime advisers, around the start of September, that tankers in the Strait of Hormuz would receive American air-based defence only in two specified daily windows, after Iran increased attacks on ships moving at night. The agency was describing August. The two-slot rule is the cover those escorts have since become.

The cover has run since May on a route that hugs Oman’s coast on the southern side of the strait. The Financial Times account does not say whether the protection is a formed convoy or cover for ships that happen to be in the lane. The restriction is a scheduling rule, not a counted cap on how many laden very large crude carriers can clear in a day; ships outside those windows sail without U.S. air cover.

Two slots on a strait already running thin

The U.S. Energy Information Administration’s latest chokepoint tally put oil flows through Hormuz at 20.9 million barrels a day in the first half of 2025, about 20% of global petroleum-liquids consumption and a quarter of seaborne oil. More than 20% of global liquefied-natural-gas trade also moved the same waterway in that half-year, most of it from Qatar. That is the baseline the war has been grinding down.

Reuters, citing Kpler tracking, counted 7 vessel transits on Thursday, down from 11 the day before and below a 10-day average of 15. In the seven days through September 3, TankerTrackers put oil moving the strait at 6.7 million barrels a day, nearly 60% below the months before the war, according to a New York Times analysis. A New York Times count of public attack records put Iranian strikes at 12 ships in August, against 11 in July; that is a monthly total, not a night-only series. The Financial Times’ night-attack claim sits beside a dated example: Reuters reported on September 1 that two tankers carrying Saudi crude were hit after loading about 2 million barrels each at Juaymah.

The International Energy Agency, in its Oil Market Report dated Friday, estimated Gulf-country oil exports in August at about 13 million barrels a day, nearly half their pre-war level. World oil supply is now projected at 100.7 million barrels a day in 2026, down 5.7 million barrels a day from a year earlier and 1.3 million barrels a day below the agency’s prior report, with a full recovery of Middle East producer supply deferred until 2027.

The land route is shut; the Red Sea exit is contested

Saudi Arabia’s Energy Ministry said Friday it had shut the East-West crude pipeline, the kingdom’s main overland way around Hormuz to Yanbu on the Red Sea, as a precaution after drone attacks on Thursday. The ministry did not give a reopening date, a throughput figure, or an attacker. President Donald Trump said Saturday that Iran was probably responsible, according to Reuters. The EIA has put the combined bypass capacity of that Saudi line and the United Arab Emirates’ Abu Dhabi pipeline at about 4.7 million barrels a day in a disruption. One of those two pipes is offline this weekend.

On the water, Houthi forces captured Mayun, also called Perim, at the mouth of the Bab el-Mandeb, the Associated Press reported, confirmed by a senior official in Yemen’s internationally recognized government and a Houthi official, both unauthorized to speak publicly. Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree said Friday that maritime navigation was safe for all companies except Saudi vessels. The island sits on the other chokepoint Gulf barrels use when they leave the Red Sea for Europe.

The two-slot rule does not close Hormuz. It does mean that the remaining U.S. air cover, the Saudi land bypass, and the Red Sea lane are all impaired in the same week.

Freight already repriced; crude has not had a session

NYMEX and ICE crude were still on their weekend halt as of Saturday morning in New York. The last completed prints are Friday’s: Brent at $104.61 a barrel, down $3.02, or 2.8%; West Texas Intermediate at $100.05, down $2.43, or 2.4%. WTI was still up 9.4% on the week. WTI futures reopen Sunday at 6 p.m. Eastern, per CME Group’s Globex hours. There is no post-report price to quote.

The bill for moving a barrel has already moved. Reuters, citing Baltic Exchange data, put the Gulf of Oman-to-China rate for very large crude carriers around Worldscale 450 on Friday, about $11.50 a barrel, the highest since that rate was launched earlier this year. Vortexa analyst Ioannis Papadimitriou said renewed U.S.-Iran attacks were pushing Gulf freight higher and thinning available ships; that is his read, not a counted shortage. The latest sourced Hormuz war-risk premia are older: Marsh’s global marine head, Marcus Baker, told S&P Global on July 22 that additional premiums had risen to 7.5%–10% of hull value from 1%–3% several weeks earlier.

Friday’s fund closes are the last regular session before the Financial Times report, not a reaction to it.

United States Oil Fund BUSO, a $2.08 billion near-month WTI book that is ungraded under etf.net’s published method, and United States Brent Oil Fund CBNO, a $608 million Brent book graded C, will reprice when those futures reopen. State Street’s S&P 500 energy-stock fund AXLE, $42.6 billion and graded A, owns producers and refiners, not the barrel and not the strait; it rose 0.3% on the day crude fell 2.4%. Amplify’s tanker-freight fund DBWET, $200 million and graded D, has about 44% of its assets in TD3C forward freight agreements for September through December 2026, the Middle East Gulf-to-China VLCC contract.

The strait is still open, on a timetable the public has not been shown. The first session that can put a number on that timetable is Sunday evening.