How Long Will the Hormuz Strait Blockade Last? The Impact on Japan's Economy and Oil and Gasoline Prices, and How Companies Should Prepare

Hello, this is Hamamoto from TIMEWELL.

I last updated this article in mid-July. At that point I closed with the view that "transit has returned under the June 17 memorandum and the immediate worst-case scenario has receded; what remains is a high-volatility phase that swings between de-escalation and renewed confrontation on a short cycle." Yet within a matter of days, the situation reversed cleanly. On July 7, Qatari- and Saudi-flagged tankers were hit by projectiles; on the 12th, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC, Iran's elite military organization) re-declared the closure of the Strait of Hormuz; and on the 14th, three tankers were reportedly attacked in quick succession¹²³. The United States and Iran have been fighting day after day, reportedly for more than six days running². This is less a "swing" than a re-closure, a renewed approach toward the worst-case scenario.

Oil prices reflect this too. Brent crude (the North Sea grade that serves as the global benchmark), which had briefly fallen to 72 dollars per barrel at the end of June, rebounded to around 86 dollars on July 14, its highest in a month². The June call to "prepare now, while prices are calm" no longer applies. Prices have entered a rebound phase, and the window to firm up your preparations is narrowing. If you want to check first whether your own export control structure can withstand this reversal, taking the free export-control readiness check to gauge where you stand before reading on will make the practical discussion in the second half more concrete.

Why Did the Strait of Hormuz Reverse Back Toward Closure in July 2026?

Let me lay out the timeline first. The trigger came at the end of February 2026, when the United States and Israel went ahead with airstrikes against Iran. In response, Iran blockaded the Strait of Hormuz by sea, and by the end of March this had become a de facto halt to transit. At its narrowest, the strait is just over 30 km wide, and it is a chokepoint through which some 20 percent of the world's seaborne crude is said to pass. A single country tightening its grip here is enough to strand tankers all over the world.

The tide turned, for a time, in June. On June 17, President Trump and President Pezeshkian were reported to have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU, a document that sets out what the parties have agreed) aimed at ending both the fighting and the closure of the strait, and on the 18th-19th large tankers, including some bound for Japan, resumed transit. But this agreement did not hold for long. On June 20, Iran declared it would re-close the strait, citing the situation in southern Lebanon, and as July began, attacks on merchant vessels came one after another, and the June 17 memorandum effectively collapsed. The United States went ahead with a counter-blockade of Iranian ports, and the situation in July has swung back toward tension¹³.

The major events of July come into focus, in their severity, when you follow them by date. On July 7, the Qatari-flagged LNG tanker Al Rekayyat and the Saudi-flagged supertanker Wedyan were hit by projectiles, and the Al Rekayyat's crew reportedly evacuated after an engine-room fire¹. On July 12, the IRGC Navy re-declared the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, asserting it would fire warning shots at vessels transiting without permission. That same day, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) announced that Iran had attacked the Cyprus-flagged container ship GFS Galaxy, severely damaging its engine room and killing one Indian crew member. In response, U.S. forces struck missile and air-defense facilities on Qeshm Island and at the port of Jask, as well as IRGC fast-attack craft, and an Iranian naval lieutenant was reported killed¹³.

On July 14, Iran was reported to have attacked three tankers in quick succession. The chemical tanker Stolt Magnesium was targeted before dawn, and the UAE-affiliated oil tankers Mombasa B and Al Bahyah were hit by cruise missiles, with deaths and people missing. The IRGC is said to have claimed responsibility, stating that the vessels had "entered a shipping lane where mines had been laid"¹². On that same July 14, the September Brent contract reached 85.92 dollars per barrel, its highest since June 15, and WTI (the U.S. benchmark crude) rose for a third straight session to around 79.34 dollars². Because reports vary on who carried out the attacks and on the exact times, I will avoid asserting specifics. But the fact that ships are being targeted one after another, and the fact that the market is responding to it directly, are no longer in any doubt.

The drop in transit volume shows up clearly in the numbers, too. Transit from Friday to Sunday was just 57 vessels, a decline of more than 50 percent week-on-week, and Thursday saw around 8, down further from 15 the day before. Considering that before the closure (prior to the end of February) 100 to 130 vessels a day were passing through, the level has fallen by an order of magnitude¹². On the other hand, on July 13 there were reports that, after making a U-turn, more than 8 million barrels of crude transited with U.S. military assistance, which tells you this is not a complete closure but a state of "threading through, thinly, while being fired upon"⁴. Amid the chaos, many vessels are running with their automatic identification system (AIS) switched off, so actual transit may be somewhat higher, a point to keep in mind when reading these figures.

On top of this, a new flashpoint over transit tolls has emerged. On July 14, President Trump, styling himself the "guardian of the strait," was reported to have announced a resumption of the counter-blockade of Iranian ports and the collection of a fee from transiting vessels (a proposed 20 percent reimbursement scheme). But the basis for calculation, the collecting authority, the legal grounds, and the effective date are all undefined, and some reports say it was withdrawn shortly afterward, so it is highly fluid². Because I have not been able to fully corroborate this point with primary sources, I treat it as report-based information, but it is worth noting that a new layer has emerged in which a price tag could be attached to transit not only by Iran but by the United States as well.

As for the market outlook, in the Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO) released on July 7, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) projects Brent crude to average 82 dollars for full-year 2026 and 65 dollars in 2027, a sharp downward revision from the previous month⁵. But this view assumes the June 18 reopening of the strait and a recovery in supply, envisioning production returning to pre-conflict levels by year-end and much of the halted volume recovering by the first quarter of 2027. It needs to be read with the caveat that it is a view formed before the mid-July re-escalation. Even the official outlook has not caught up with the current reality.

Five Things That Would Happen If the Closure Drags On

With July's reversal, the immediate worst-case scenario has in fact drawn closer. With executive reporting in mind, let me organize the shocks into five stages, assuming the re-closure stays entrenched as it is.

The first is a jump in the procurement cost of crude and LNG. Japan depends on the Middle East for about 90 percent of its crude, most of which transits Hormuz. What is easy to overlook here is the difference from LNG. For crude, Saudi Arabia's east-west pipeline and the UAE's ADCOP (the crude pipeline running to the port of Fujairah) can divert 3.5 to 5.5 million barrels per day, but this amounts to only around 25 percent of Hormuz transit volume. For LNG, however, there is almost no such escape route. Between 93 and 96 percent of the LNG exported by Qatar and the UAE passes through Hormuz, and there is no alternative maritime route usable in the short term. Since July 11, no LNG carrier transits have been confirmed; Qatar has advised a temporary suspension of all maritime activity, and QatarEnergy is reported to have halted the recovery of production at Ras Laffan¹. For power and gas operators, it is this irreplaceability of LNG, even more than crude, that bites.

The second is the pass-through to domestic prices and retail gasoline. This was the prime example of where prices fell in June, but in July the tide turned. The national average for regular gasoline stood at 169.9 yen per liter as of July 13, staying below 170 yen for the eighth week running⁶. Yet the per-unit subsidy under the government's price-stabilization measure rose to 7.50 yen for the week of July 16 to 22, an increase of 4.7 yen from 2.8 yen the previous week. This is the first upward turn since the emergency measure resumed on March 19, and it halts eight straight weeks of tapering since the May 14 peak⁷⁸. The breakdown is 4.9 yen for the monthly adjustment reflecting alternative procurement costs and 2.6 yen for the variable subsidy on the portion above 170 yen; diesel, kerosene, and heavy oil are likewise subsidized at 7.50 yen, and jet fuel by about 3.0 yen⁷. The explanation used through early July, of an "exit phase in which the subsidy automatically drops to zero once the price falls below 170 yen," had to be retracted with this upward turn. If crude heads back toward 100 dollars, household costs for fuel, electricity, and food would be pushed up all at once. According to an estimate by the Economic Research Office of Mitsubishi UFJ Bank's Corporate Planning Division, if crude averages 33 percent higher year-on-year than in peacetime, FY2026 real GDP growth would be dragged down by 0.1 to 0.2 percentage points, and consumer price inflation would be pushed up by more than 0.3 percentage points⁹. Even if the macro figures look modest, energy-intensive sectors such as power, chemicals, transport, and materials face pressure several times the average.

The third is stagnation in trade flows. When transit falls to 57 vessels or even 8, ships including Japanese vessels pile up inside the Persian Gulf, and even large vessels such as car carriers are stranded. Diverting via the Suez Canal or the Cape of Good Hope means more than 10 days of added one-way lead time, and supply chains built on just-in-time assumptions clog up. Marine insurance premiums, too, have at times seen war-risk surcharges jump to many times normal levels, with reports of additional burdens on the order of several million dollars per voyage for a large tanker¹⁰. As Qatar's advisory to halt all maritime activity shows, decisions to stop operating altogether are actually being made¹. Because exports to the Middle East and imports from it stop at the same time, how to invoke force majeure clauses and price-revision clauses in contracts becomes the central agenda for the legal departments of trading houses and manufacturers.

The fourth is the cascade of supply-chain rupture. If procurement of naphtha, the feedstock for petrochemicals, thins out, production of the functional chemicals in which Japan holds high global share is constrained, with effects reaching the upstream of autos and electronic components¹¹. If LNG carrier transits remain unconfirmed for a sustained period, the ripple extends beyond city gas and power-generation fuel to the operating plans of chemical plants. Even industries that seem far removed from the Middle East, such as housing equipment, paints, and construction machinery, often find, when they trace their raw materials, that the trail runs through the Middle East. The sense that "we don't deal with the Middle East, so this doesn't concern us" is, I believe, the most dangerous of all.

The fifth is delivery delays for semiconductors and electronic components. As items whose maritime export routes, like LNG, are concentrated on Hormuz thin out, this coincides with the flow, as U.S.-China talks advance, of high-performance AI chip exports to China starting to move again. Because Middle East-driven supply constraints and the U.S.-China resumption of trade take effect at the same time, the very prioritization order of global semiconductor production gets reshuffled. Rebuilding delivery plans with one eye on the Middle East and one eye on U.S.-China is, as of July, the realistic posture.

Supply Chain and Export Control Risks for Japanese Companies

What is most practical for your own company is the export control discussion from here on. As of July, the Middle East energy corridor, China's dual-use controls, and U.S. OFAC and BIS moves are all strongly interlocked.

The risks that hit directly via the Middle East now number more than three. Disruption of raw material and component procurement; loss of sales opportunities from halted exports to the Middle East; and the secondary-sanctions risk on toll payments to Iran that the U.S. Treasury's OFAC (Office of Foreign Assets Control) made explicit in FAQ 1249, issued on April 28¹²¹³. FAQ 1249 covers not only fiat currency but also crypto assets, set-offs, informal swaps, and even account transfers disguised as charitable purposes, and it holds that neither direct nor indirect payments by U.S. persons or by foreign entities under U.S. control are licensed¹². Its scope reaches Japanese companies' U.S. subsidiaries, transactions cleared in U.S. dollars, and even exports that contain U.S.-made products or technology. On top of this, in July, the aforementioned U.S.-side toll proposal was layered on as a new dimension. The structure risks putting companies in a bind, secondary-sanctions exposure if they pay the Iranian side, and a separate cost if they comply with the U.S. counter-blockade, and situations arise where they must decide whether to sail with the basis for calculation and the legal grounds still undefined².

Third-country routing risk adds another layer on top of this. When the Middle East route clogs, flows via Singapore or the UAE as logistics hubs come up as substitute candidates, but third-country routing tends to receive looser checks under catch-all controls (the system for verifying uses and counterparties that could contribute to the development of weapons of mass destruction or conventional weapons). On October 9, 2025, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) revised its supplementary export controls, newly establishing an inform requirement even for former white-listed countries¹⁴. Further, on February 14, 2026, a new goods and technology matrix took effect, updating the item categories for list-based controls as well¹⁵. The old reflex that "shipping via Singapore makes it fine" no longer holds.

The linkage with U.S. and Chinese controls cannot be ignored either. On January 6, 2026, China issued Ministry of Commerce Notice No. 1, restricting exports to Japan of dual-use items destined for military end-users or military end-uses¹⁶. The scope broadly includes tungsten, molybdenum, rare-earth magnets, carbon fiber, specialty alloys, and other items used in semiconductors, autos, and defense. On the defense front, the Three Principles on Transfer of Defense Equipment and Technology were also amended on April 21, 2026, and I cover that institutional side in detail in The Amendment to the Three Principles on Transfer of Defense Equipment and Technology¹⁷. Around China, moreover, military developments such as the SLBM launch into the Pacific and the tension around Japan's EEZ are layering on top of the regulatory side, so geopolitical risk can no longer be read through a Middle East lens alone. Unless you track the regulatory updates in all three directions at once, the Middle East energy corridor, minerals and components routed via China, and U.S. sanctions, the very premises of your export control rules drift out of alignment. For a concrete picture of how to run classification and counterparty screening in practice, Practical Export Control for Companies is worth reading alongside this.

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Three Risk Assessments Companies Should Start Immediately

A compound risk like the Middle East situation is, in my field experience, easiest for an organization to act on when you evaluate it in parallel along three axes. Let me walk through them in order, at a level of detail you could propose directly at tomorrow's executive meeting.

The first axis is geopolitical risk assessment. List out the company's procurement, sales, and production sites against four numbers: Middle East dependence ratio, Hormuz routing ratio, China dependence ratio, and U.S. dependence ratio. Aggregate them across three layers, the bill of materials (BOM) level, the item level, and the supplier level, and, realistically, secure at least two alternative supply countries starting with the highest-risk items. At the government level, as of May it was indicated that alternative crude procurement not routed through Hormuz was expected to be raised to around 80 percent in June, with the explanation that, combined with stockpile releases, this would exceed the required volume¹⁸. I organize the government's institutional moves on energy autonomy separately in Japan's Economic Security Council and MLIT's Energy Autonomy Policy. That, however, was a view as of June, and July's re-closure has shaken its premises. As far as I have heard, cases where private companies have completed the same exercise on their own BOMs are still a minority. Companies that cannot lock in new supply allocations within three months will see a clear gap open up in procurement costs in the second half of the fiscal year.

The second axis is export control risk assessment. Check how far your export control rules, classification flows, and counterparty screening have kept up with five regulatory updates: the supplementary export controls that took effect on October 9, 2025¹⁴; the new goods and technology matrix that took effect on February 14, 2026¹⁵; the Three Principles on Transfer of Defense Equipment and Technology amended on April 21¹⁷; OFAC FAQ 1249 of April 28¹²; and China's Ministry of Commerce Notice No. 1 of January 6¹⁶. On top of this, in July, the undefined question of the U.S.-side toll proposal was added. A manufacturing export control manager I spoke with told me that overtime since March had risen 1.5 times month-on-month, and that responding to OFAC FAQ 1249 had made it heavier still. Handling this with manpower alone is, frankly, nearing its limit.

The third axis is risk assessment of procurement diversification and contract clauses. For raw material supply contracts, transport contracts, and EPC contracts, check one by one the conditions that trigger force majeure clauses, the triggers for price-revision clauses, and the caps on late-delivery penalties. Because force majeure is interpreted differently under Japanese civil law and under Anglo-American law, legal review is needed by governing law. Since both insurance coverage and contract interpretation change depending on whether a Hormuz closure counts as "economic sanctions" or as "war or use of force," re-confirm marine insurance across three points, hull war insurance, cargo war insurance, and the SRCC endorsement, checking the scope of cover, the excluded waters, and the 48-hour rule¹⁰. Given July's rebound phase, extending FX and raw material hedges from the conventional three-to-six months out to nine-to-twelve months ahead is a reasonable call. Running these three axes through a weekly cross-functional task force moves the monthly executive meeting from "aligning on the facts" to "choosing among courses of action."

Supply Chain Visibility With TRAFEED

Running everything organized above manually every month is, frankly, not realistic. Updates to U.S.-China talks, additions to China's Ministry of Commerce notices, revisions to OFAC FAQs, and detailed changes to supplementary export controls each emerge on their own monthly cycles. And, as in July, undefined issues like the toll proposal come raining down on a timescale of days. Internal rules updated at the start of the month are partly out of date by month-end. That, I think, is the lived sense of an export control manager in 2026.

The TRAFEED (formerly ZEROCK ExCHECK) we provide is the world's first export control AI agent, a service that automates METI-standard-compliant classification (gaihi-hantei), counterparty screening, and the end-use requirement checks of catch-all controls. Concretely, it processes HS-code-level classification with the latest logic that reflects the supplementary export controls effective October 9, 2025 and the new goods and technology matrix effective February 14, 2026; automatically cross-checks counterparty countries against sanctions and end-user lists (covering the major OFAC, EU, U.K., U.N., and METI lists); inspects Iran-related transaction flows in line with U.S. OFAC FAQ 1249; and checks the uses and end-users of China-origin dual-use items in line with China's Ministry of Commerce Notice No. 1, all in a single management console. Note that it is designed on the premise that the final classification decision is made by your company's export control officer.

Where it proves especially useful from July onward is that, amid wild swings in prices and transit, it lets you handle the re-screening of Middle East-related transactions and the license applications for China- and Southeast Asia-bound deals that have started moving on U.S.-China talks without managing them in separate spreadsheets. Multilingual support is built in, so you can work with English, Chinese, and Arabic transaction documents as they are, and document review for Middle East-, China-, and ASEAN-bound transactions is completed entirely through on-screen input. For areas TRAFEED alone cannot cover, for instance revisiting the assumptions of a medium-term plan in light of the Hormuz situation, or revising internal rules in response to the amended Three Principles on Transfer of Defense Equipment and Technology, we provide support in combination with WARP consulting. Former specialists in DX and data strategy at major firms accompany you with monthly updates, so you can keep your internal operations updated in step with the regulatory cycle.

Conclusion: Hormuz Has Entered a Phase of Reversing Back Toward Closure

The view that "June's recovery pushed the worst-case scenario back" had to be retracted with July's developments. With the tanker attacks on the 7th, 12th, and 14th, the IRGC's re-declaration of the closure, and successive U.S. airstrikes, Brent crude rebounded from 72 dollars to around 86 dollars², and eight straight weeks of tapering gasoline subsidies turned to expansion⁷. Today's Hormuz is not "winding down"; it is in an ongoing phase of approaching the worst-case scenario once again. That is my view at this point in time.

There is no fixed date, verifiable from primary sources, to answer the question readers care about most: "how long will it last?" But the triggers for judging whether the closure drags on or reopens can be narrowed to three. The first is the state of compliance with the June 17 memorandum; if it becomes entirely a dead letter, a prolonged closure becomes more likely. The second is the frequency of tanker attacks; as long as they continue every few days, as on the 7th, 12th, and 14th, transit will not return. The third is the number of consecutive days of U.S.-Iran fighting; if the reported "more than six days running" breaks and holds for several days, a temporary recovery in transit like June's could recur. Simply plotting these three points on a weekly monitoring sheet makes the discussion at executive meetings considerably more concrete.

This very reversal is the real risk for companies. Firms that eased up on their preparations while prices were falling were caught out in the opposite direction by July's news. That is exactly why the minimum set is worth starting now, precisely as prices begin to rebound: listing your supply chain's Middle East dependence ratio, Hormuz routing ratio, China dependence ratio, and U.S. dependence ratio at the BOM level; bringing your export control rules into line with the five items (October's supplementary controls, February's new matrix, April's amended Three Principles on Transfer of Defense Equipment and Technology, April's OFAC FAQ 1249, and January's China Ministry of Commerce notice); and checking the force majeure, price-revision, and insurance-coverage provisions of your contracts by governing law.

TRAFEED and WARP are services for re-engineering that work from "processing every case by hand" to "an AI agent does the groundwork and humans concentrate on judgment." Run 2026's export control, with the Middle East situation, U.S.-China talks, and Chinese regulation all moving in parallel, not on front-line overtime but in a form that is sustainable as an organization. You can review the feature overview in the TRAFEED service catalog (PDF). If you are unsure where to start reviewing your own structure, begin by taking stock of your current dependence levels and the gaps in your rules together. Reach out first via a one-on-one consultation.

References

Footnotes

1. [Data Tracker] Situation in the Strait of Hormuz (primary data tracker for maritime shipping and vessel counts) — Jiji Press — 2026 — https://www.jiji.com/jc/tokushu?id=straitOfHormuzTradeTracker_2026 ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸

2. Oil hits 1-month high as US-Iran fighting clouds Strait of Hormuz outlook (Brent 85.92 dollars, toll proposal, 57 transits) — Al Jazeera — July 14, 2026 — https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2026/7/14/oil-hits-1-month-high-as-us-iran-fighting-clouds-strait-of-hormuz-outlook ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹

3. U.S. fires a new wave of strikes on Iran and hits a tanker trying to skirt its blockade — NPR — July 15, 2026 — https://www.npr.org/2026/07/15/nx-s1-5894582/us-iran-updates ↩ ↩² ↩³

4. U.S. says more than 8 million barrels of oil transited Hormuz Sunday with military assistance — CNBC — July 13, 2026 — https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/13/ship-traffic-through-hormuz-falls-as-us-and-iran-fight-for-control.html ↩

5. Short-Term Energy Outlook (July 2026 edition, published July 7; Brent 2026 = 82 dollars, 2027 = 65 dollars) — U.S. Energy Information Administration — July 7, 2026 — https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/ ↩

6. Transition of the national average gasoline price (July 13: 169.9 yen/L) — Fuel Oil Price Stabilization Program — July 13, 2026 — https://nenryo-teigakuhikisage.go.jp/current_graph.pdf ↩

7. Fuel Oil Price Stabilization Program (per-unit subsidy 7.50 yen/L, July 16-22, 2026) — Agency for Natural Resources and Energy — July 2026 — https://nenryo-teigakuhikisage.go.jp/ ↩ ↩² ↩³

8. Emergency price-stabilization measures for fuel oil in light of the Middle East situation — METI, Agency for Natural Resources and Energy — 2026 — https://www.enecho.meti.go.jp/about/special/johoteikyo/fuel_price_shien_2026.html ↩

9. Economic Brief: De facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz and its impact on the global economy — Mitsubishi UFJ Bank, Economic Research Office, Corporate Planning Division — April 3, 2026 — https://www.bk.mufg.jp/report/whatsnew/report_20260403.pdf ↩

10. Japanese non-life insurers to expand marine insurance surcharges in the Middle East — Nikkei — March 2026 — https://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXZQOUB03APS0T00C26A3000000/ ↩ ↩²

11. Middle East Risk and Logistics (2): Japan-Middle East trade and the impact of a Hormuz closure — JETRO — 2026 — https://www.jetro.go.jp/biz/areareports/2026/190b55f892c6980c.html ↩

12. FAQ 1249: Strait of Hormuz Toll Payments — U.S. Department of the Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets Control — April 28, 2026 — https://ofac.treasury.gov/faqs/1249 ↩ ↩² ↩³

13. Sanctions Risks of Iranian Demands for Strait of Hormuz Passage (OFAC ALERT) — U.S. Department of the Treasury — April 2026 — https://ofac.treasury.gov/media/935556/download?inline= ↩

14. On the revision of supplementary export controls (effective October 9, 2025) — METI — October 9, 2025 — https://www.meti.go.jp/policy/anpo/apply-01/20251009_catchminaoshi/20251009catchall.html ↩ ↩²

15. Cabinet Order partially amending the Export Trade Control Order (new goods and technology matrix, effective February 14, 2026) — METI — November 11, 2025 — https://www.meti.go.jp/press/2025/11/20251111001/20251111001.html ↩ ↩²

16. Analysis of China's Ministry of Commerce Notice No. 1 (restrictions on dual-use exports to Japan, January 6, 2026) — Greenberg Traurig — February 2026 — https://www.gtlaw.com/en/insights/2026/2/china-imposes-escalated-export-controls-on-dual-use-items-to-japan ↩ ↩²

17. On the partial amendment to the "Three Principles on Transfer of Defense Equipment and Technology" — METI — April 21, 2026 — https://www.meti.go.jp/press/2026/04/20260421003/20260421003.html ↩ ↩²

18. Press conference on the FY2026 supplementary budget in light of the Middle East situation — Prime Minister's Office of Japan — May 25, 2026 — https://www.kantei.go.jp/jp/105/statement/2026/0525kaiken.html ↩