Introduction
The Strait of Hormuz Trade Tracker, developed jointly by AXSMarine and the World Trade Organization (WTO), offers a range of indicators for shipments of key commodities - crude oil, natural gas, fertilizer-related products including sulphur and ammonia, and agricultural products - through the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most critical maritime channels.
Leveraging AXSMarine’s comprehensive vessel-tracking and cross-commodity cargo intelligence, this dashboard is updated daily, offering near-real-time insights into the volume and pattern of trade in products transiting or affected by developments in the Strait of Hormuz.
Leveraging AXSMarine’s comprehensive vessel-tracking and cross-commodity cargo intelligence, this dashboard is updated daily, offering near-real-time insights into the volume and pattern of trade in products transiting or affected by developments in the Strait of Hormuz.
Strategic Trade Insight: Cross-Commodity Impact of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz
The disruption to global maritime trade following Iran's announcement of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz on 2 March 2026 has resulted in outbound traffic from the Persian Gulf tracked by AIS* coming to almost a complete halt. Charts 1-3 show a simultaneous break in traffic across three categories of goods — crude oil, liquefied natural gas (LNG) and fertilizer-related products — at the end of February.
Crude oil outbound shipments fell to almost zero on 28 February. LNG and fertilizer-related shipments also dropped abruptly, with virtually no visible outbound activity thereafter, apart from a small and isolated fertilizer-related movement on 3 March.
Given the Strait’s central role in global energy and commodity flows, the disruption has immediate implications for export supply chains, shipping patterns and global markets.
For agricultural products, inbound shipments display a different pattern of activity. Volumes did not drop immediately after the disruption began because the series is based on the date of discharging cargo, not the date when a vessel transited the Strait. Many ships had likely already passed through the Strait and reached their destination ports before the closure but their cargo was discharged only in the following days or weeks. As a result, inbound agricultural shipments continue to appear in the data even when the trade route had been effectively shut down.
Because the data cover AIS-traceable vessels only, the charts may not capture all traffic passing through the Strait. However, the decline visible across outbound indicators strongly demonstrate that the Strait of Hormuz was effectively closed to outbound maritime trade over the period observed while data on inbound agricultural shipments mainly reflect the date of discharging cargo rather than maritime traffic.
* AIS (automatic identification system) is an automatic tracking system that uses transponders on ships to monitor maritime traffic.