2,000 ships

Roughly 2,000 vessels and 20,000 seafarers are stranded in and around the Strait of Hormuz. They are oil tankers, gas carriers, bulk carriers, container ships and cargo vessels that cannot cross the most important chokepoint in global energy trade. The UN's International Maritime Organization announced it would begin negotiating with countries to establish a humanitarian corridor.

The numbers are not abstract. Each VLCC supertanker carries around 2 million barrels of crude. If a fraction of those 2,000 ships are tankers, tens of millions of barrels of oil are floating without a destination. More than 20 vessels have reported projectile incidents in the Persian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz and Gulf of Oman since the war began. The IRGC continues to insist every ship needs Iranian permission to transit. Marine insurers have pulled war risk coverage. Without insurance, no shipowner takes the chance.

The IEA called this "the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market". Twenty thousand sailors are trapped aboard, many from countries like the Philippines, India and Bangladesh, far from their families, on ships anchored in waters where drones and missiles fall. It is a humanitarian crisis that does not make war headlines but is unfolding in real time, at one of the hottest points on the planet.