Andre Klynsmith

Supply Chain Management

Seven Ships in a Day: The Number SADC Importers Should Watch Instead of the Oil Price

Seven vessels transited the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday, down from twelve the previous day and well below the ten-day average of fourteen, according to preliminary ship-tracking data. Of the four that exited, exactly one was a very large crude carrier, and no vessel carrying liquefied natural gas left the Strait at all. For importers across the SADC region, that single-day count is a more useful planning input than the oil price it eventually produces.

Supply Chain Management

12 September 2026 • 4 min read

A price tells you what happened. A vessel count tells you what is about to happen. The gap between the two is roughly the length of a voyage — and that is precisely the window in which a procurement decision is still worth making.

What the Wednesday count contained

Reuters reported that of the seven transits, four vessels exited and three entered. One of the exits was the very large crude carrier Finland Prosperity, carrying close to two million barrels. The other three outbound movements were two dry bulk carriers and a short-range dirty products tanker. Inbound, one dry bulk carrier, one short-range tanker and one medium-range tanker.

The composition matters as much as the total. A day with no LNG departure is a gas-market event. A day with one loaded VLCC is a crude event. A day with two bulkers is a signal for anyone shipping fertiliser, grain or industrial minerals through the Gulf. The same figure read as a single number loses all of that.

The bypass route is now the variable

Saudi Arabia's Red Sea port of Yanbu has become the principal way to load crude without transiting Hormuz, and its throughput is now the number that moves. Vortexa data shows Yanbu loadings rising to 3.7 million barrels a day in September from 3.2 million in August, which was the lowest level since the war began. Kpler puts the same recovery lower, at 2.9 million barrels a day in September against just 1.5 million a month earlier.

August's slump was driven by intensified Houthi activity near the Bab el-Mandeb. In other words, the workaround has its own disruption profile, and it is not correlated with the chokepoint it was built to avoid. Planning that assumes the alternative route is stable because the primary one is closed has the logic backwards.

Read the data with its limits attached

Two caveats are worth building into any internal dashboard. First, some vessels sail with transponders switched off and are never counted, so published transit totals are a floor rather than a measurement. Second, Vortexa and Kpler disagree materially on Yanbu — 3.7 million barrels a day against 2.9 million is not a rounding difference. Where two credible providers diverge, the honest response is to plan against the lower figure and treat the higher one as upside.

None of this requires a subscription budget. Daily transit counts and loading estimates are reported openly in the maritime trade press, and a fifteen-minute weekly read is enough to see a trend forming before it reaches a pump price or a supplier's force majeure notice.

About the Author
	Andre Klynsmith Entrepreneur & Technology Enthusiast Andre's expertise spans technology, blockchain, transport, and logistics - with a passion for innovation and driving positive change across industries. info@laaimylorrie.com | laaimylorrie.com