Counted in Barrels

> Washington now reports the Strait of Hormuz substantially recovered, and every number behind that report was produced by the United States government. Every independent body still measuring the water reports it severely constrained. Nobody has reconciled the two accounts, and the people who must decide whether to send a hull through are reading both.

On the night of Monday 31 August a supertanker called the Sidr was crossing the Strait of Hormuz when projectiles struck her north of Oman's Musandam Peninsula. She belongs to Bahri, the Saudi national carrier. Two of her crew were killed, both Filipino. Saudi Arabia's foreign ministry named Iran as the attacker two days later, and Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE condemned it.

That same 31 August was the best day the war has produced for oil moving through that water. The US Energy Secretary said tankers carried more than 17 million barrels through the strait, the highest volume since the fighting began. Set against a pre-war average near 21.6 million barrels a day, that is most of the way back.

Both statements are true. They describe the same 24 hours.

The following night American forces struck two Iranian government tankers, empty and at anchor inside Iranian waters, putting drone-launched missiles into their engine rooms. An official called it a new tanker-for-tanker policy approved by the President, the first time the United States has hit Iranian tankers in answer to attacks on shipping rather than to enforce its blockade. Another said the strikes had bought at least a month of lower threat. A third said Iran had lost control of the strait and of the war together. On Tuesday the President said Washington has almost total control of the waterway.

Now look at where those figures come from.

The 17 million barrels came from the Energy Secretary. An unnamed official briefing one reporter supplied the count of 40 transits, and that is the same official quoted saying the Iranians got nothing that day. Behind the second-quarter baseline sits the Energy Information Administration. Every number describing this strait as recovering was produced by the government running the escorts.

The bodies with no stake in the answer report something else. UKMTO put traffic around 90 percent below pre-conflict levels in late August. The Joint Maritime Information Centre has held its Severe threat rating in place despite American claims that the mines are cleared. Kpler counted between four and sixteen transits a day across that week. Foreign Policy wrote on Tuesday that traffic has nearly stopped, and said outright that the President and the shipping industry disagree about the condition of the strait.

A volume figure and a vessel count can legitimately part company. Fewer and fuller hulls under naval escort move more oil than many small ones, and a convoy is exactly the shape a recovery under protection would take. That reading is available and it may well be right. The competing reading is that 17 million barrels measures what the US Navy achieved on one day rather than what the waterway has become. Nothing published so far chooses between them.

What settles the question sits with charterers, war-risk underwriters and the men who sign on. None of them has published a number since the strikes, and their verdict arrives as a price rather than a statement.

Two of them signed on to the Sidr and did not come home. That is the only figure from 31 August nobody disputes.