17 MILLION BARRELS CROSSED HORMUZ IN ONE DAY — STILL SHORT OF PREWAR

🔴 More than 17 million barrels of oil moved through the Strait of Hormuz on Monday — a wartime record, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright told CNBC.

It is still below where it started.

Before the war began on Feb. 28, around 20 million barrels per day of crude and products passed through the waterway. That flow accounted for one-fifth of the world's oil trade.

So the record is a wartime record. Not a return to normal.

And CNBC reports that ship-trackers say transits have dropped further in recent days, as military strikes in the region resumed following a weekslong hiatus.

The administration's counter-argument is an accounting one: total oil exports from the region are now higher than before the war, it says — provided the tally includes Saudi Arabia's and the UAE's pipelines that route around Hormuz altogether. Barrels that never touch the strait.

📉 Meanwhile, President Trump posted Wednesday asking whether the strait should be renamed "Trump Strait." CNBC notes it is not clear how that would be implemented for a waterway that is not near the U.S. A recent executive order renaming Lake Ontario directed the Interior Department to update the Geographic Names Information System; Canada rejected the change, though Google and Apple have updated their maps.

For anyone watching crude, only one line on the page moves money: how many barrels actually get through.

Does a 17-million-barrel day tell you the oil market is fine?

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