Hormuz transits quadruple as ceasefire holds, but the energy map is rewiring

Hormuz transits quadrupled over the past week as the US-Iran ceasefire held, the Financial Times reports. Tankers that spent three weeks detouring around the Cape or waiting at anchor are moving back through the strait. Oil prices ticked up slightly ahead of the US long weekend, Reuters notes, but the move was restrained—peace efforts are holding, and the market is treating the normalization as durable enough to price.

The ceasefire is real, but the rewiring it interrupted is still running. Canada unveiled plans for a new pipeline capable of moving one million barrels per day to Asian buyers, explicitly designed to reduce dependence on the US amid sustained trade friction, according to the FT. The project reflects a longer-term shift: hydrocarbon suppliers are building infrastructure that assumes the old export map—US as dominant offtaker, Gulf as dominant chokepoint—no longer holds.

Europe is reconfiguring its own supply lines. Russian shadow tankers are now avoiding the English Channel entirely after a series of naval interceptions, the FT reports, instead taking a circuitous north Atlantic route around the UK. The detour adds days and cost, but the sanctions enforcement is tight enough that the longer path is now the default. Meanwhile Goldman Sachs told Reuters that European growth is suffering more from Chinese export competition than from the trade imbalance itself—a sign that energy isn't the only map being redrawn.

The lesson in the data is straightforward. Hormuz is open again, but the month it was contested accelerated decisions that were already in motion. Canada is building pipes east. Russia is rerouting north. The US oil market is no longer the automatic destination, and the strait is no longer the automatic route. The ceasefire bought time, but it didn't reverse the reconfiguration.