Oil flows crossing the Strait of Hormuz fell to 2.9 million barrels on October 11, the lowest level of the month, following the largest surge in attacks on vessels since the conflict began in February, according to a tally by the firm Kpler reported by Al Jazeera.
Before the conflict, the strait carried around 125 commercial vessels per day and roughly 20% of global supplies of crude and liquefied natural gas. In September, Gulf flows through Hormuz, excluding Iran, recovered to more than 81% of pre-conflict levels. The effect reaches Mexico through prices: El Economista reported that the Mexican export blend closed on October 13 at 95.82 dollars per barrel, a loss of 0.69%, on a day when Brent fell 0.9% to 105.69 dollars and WTI rose 0.4% to 94.14.
The Al Jazeera report details that between September 28 and October 4, 10 tankers were hit in the strait, plus an additional attack on October 5, while the UKMTO center counted 15 incidents between October 6 and October 14, 11 of them in the last four days. On October 8, 20.8 million barrels crossed, against a pre-conflict daily average of 17.1 million. The Joint Maritime Information Center keeps the threat to merchant shipping at a severe level. Iran maintains that its restrictions on the waterway are a matter of national security, while the United States Central Command stated that U.S. forces and regional partners control the strait and escorted more than 19 million barrels on Monday.
The next Kpler tallies will indicate whether the drop in flows holds or whether the escort system sustains volumes. For Mexico, the benchmark crude feeds into the export blend, which closed on October 13 at 95.82 dollars and is the basis for the country's oil revenues.
This article was written with the assistance of artificial intelligence from verified sources and reviewed by a human editor before publication.