US Defense Official says some 60 commercial vessels transited the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday, carrying the highest daily volume of crude since early July

The split that matters is escorted versus unescorted tonnage: when a large share of transits coordinate with naval protection it indicates operators still price an attack or harassment risk, even as volumes recover. Historically the market sequence in such episodes runs from war-risk premia and tanker insurance rates first, then spot freight, with the crude futures curve only durably repricing when actual loadings are disrupted rather than merely threatened. A normalization in daily transit counts has tended to bleed the geopolitical premium out of the front of the curve, narrowing prompt spreads back toward levels set by physical balances. What bears watching is whether escort coordination scales back, whether insurers reprice Gulf transits lower, and whether the loading programs of Gulf producers confirm the flow recovery. The signal here is one of de-escalation in logistics, not in the underlying dispute.