Market Pulse: What a Hormuz Reopening Would Save Gulf Grain Importers (published June 16, 2026) (2026-08-11)

Location: Market Pulse: What a Hormuz Reopening Would Save Gulf Grain Importers (published June 16, 2026)

What was wrong: The article stated in two places that the Strait of Hormuz handles approximately one-third of global seaborne oil trade, attributed to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, and cited the agency home page rather than the page carrying the figure. It also opened on the premise that a US-Iran de-escalation had put the strait back on track to reopen, and stated that the cost of moving grain into the Gulf just got cheaper.

What it now says: Both share figures now read more than one-quarter of total global seaborne traded oil, with the EIA's 21 million barrels per day and about 21 percent of global petroleum liquids consumption added for 2022 and the first half of 2023, cited to the specific EIA page. The reopening premise is now stated in the conditional throughout, the title and summary no longer present a reopening as imminent or complete, and an editor's note records that the reopening did not follow and that the strait remains closed as reported. The shipping arithmetic is unchanged.

Why it was wrong and how it was caught: 2026-08-11. Two separate problems, caught in the same pass while checking the Hormuz oil-share figure against EIA for a proposed new article. First, a sourcing error present at publication: EIA states more than one-quarter of seaborne traded oil, not approximately one-third, so the cited source did not support the cited number. Second, a premise overtaken by events: the article was published June 16, 2026 on the expectation of a reopening, the memorandum signed the following day did not result in one, and the piece had been live for roughly eight weeks telling readers a reopening was on track and that grain shipping costs had already fallen. A dated article is a snapshot and is not rewritten to hide its premise, so the conditional analysis and its arithmetic stand as published; only the tense of the two sentences asserting a completed or imminent reopening, the title, and the summary were changed, with the editor's note carrying the current status. Two further attributions on this article, the 3,500-mile Cape of Good Hope detour and the marine fuel price, are also credited to EIA and could not be verified on any EIA page reached during this pass; they are unresolved and flagged for a follow-up citation review rather than corrected here.

Primary source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, The Strait of Hormuz is the world's most important oil transit chokepoint (November 21, 2023) (https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61002)