Summary
- UAE ports are saturated — 58% of diversions are staying inside the Gulf (up from 43% in Week 1), with cargo bouncing between Jebel Ali, Fujairah, and Khawr Fakkan rather than reaching end markets.
- Dwell times are at crisis levels — Abu Dhabi at 48.9 days, Jebel Ali at 46.9 days (up from 13.5 in Week 1). Cargo is waiting over six weeks to clear.
- Relief valves are closing — India’s share of diverted cargo halved in one week (15% → 8%); Kuwait has formed its own internal loop
Overview
Seven weeks into the Strait of Hormuz closure, the diversion data is telling a story that is different from what a falling headline number suggests. Total diversions declined again in Week 7, reaching 5,317 — the lowest weekly figure of the disruption. But the composition of those diversions has fundamentally changed.
In the early weeks of the disruption, cargo originally destined for UAE ports was being rerouted to India, Sri Lanka, and Oman — real geographic redistribution across the Indian Ocean. In Week 7, 58% of all diversions ended inside the UAE itself, up from 43% in Week 1. The network is not redistributing cargo outward. It is compressing it into a smaller and smaller area.
Weekly diversion totals
The Week 7 figure of 5,317 is the lowest of the disruption. Pre-disruption weekly baselines ran between 1,075 and 1,581, so even at this low point, diversions are running roughly 3.5 times normal. But the more important signal is the composition shift tracked below.
Where diverted cargo is actually going
The UAE figure requires emphasis. In Week 1, when the disruption began and carriers scrambled to reroute cargo across the Indian Ocean, 43% of diversions still ended inside the UAE. After seven weeks of supposed adaptation, that share has risen to 58%. The network has not built more capacity elsewhere — it has run out of capacity elsewhere.
The India decline is equally important. India was absorbing 12–15% of diverted cargo in Weeks 5 and 6. In Week 7, that share dropped to 8%, even as the total number of diversions also fell. The TSP1 (transshipment) dwell at Nhava Sheva stands at 14.0 days, Mundra at 13.6 days, and Pipavav at 24.6 days. These ports are congested at the transshipment layer, which is precisely where diverted Gulf cargo would arrive.
Dwell Time Trends: Weeks 1–7
Import dwell across key ports:
Jebel Ali has posted a new high every single week of the disruption without exception — from 13.5 days in Week 1 to 46.9 days in Week 7. That is a 3.5× increase over seven weeks with no sign of inflection. At the current rate of increase (roughly 5–7 days per week), Jebel Ali import dwell would exceed 60 days by the end of May.
Transshipment dwell across key ports:
Pipavav’s TSP1 dwell peaked at 36.7 days in Week 5 and has since fallen to 24.6 days — a genuine improvement. Colombo’s TSP1 dwell has been declining since Week 5 and now stands at 9.1 days, approaching pre-disruption levels. These two data points could be read as positive: some relief is filtering through to certain relay nodes.
But the reason for that relief matters. Pipavav and Colombo are receiving less cargo in Week 7 — not because congestion has cleared, but because India’s share of diverted cargo has fallen from 15% to 8% and Sri Lanka’s has dropped to under 1%. The dwell improvement at downstream nodes is a consequence of cargo collapsing back into the UAE, not of the network returning to health.
A signal worth watching
The falling diversion count may partly reflect something this dataset cannot directly measure: shippers planning around Hormuz from origin rather than diverting after the fact. Voyages committed after Week 3 — when it became clear the closure was not temporary — would not appear as diversions. They would simply never enter the Gulf-bound pipeline.
Three readings in the data are consistent with that shift. Jeddah is now receiving 7.7 vessel calls per day — 30% above its pre-disruption baseline — more vessel calls than before the crisis, not simply more than last week. King Abdullah Port retained 62% of arriving TEUs in Week 7 without forwarding them by sea, consistent with onward land distribution toward the Saudi interior and Gulf coast via the Jeddah–Riyadh corridor. And Salalah’s net TEU flow reversed from peak accumulation of +27,366 in Week 5 to −20,396 in Week 7, dispatching far more than it receives. With the Gulf transshipment route effectively closed, that outbound flow points westward toward the Red Sea. None of these readings is conclusive on its own.
What seven weeks of data tells us
Seven weeks in, the pattern is clear. Weeks 1–4 showed the network scrambling outward — cargo reaching India and Sri Lanka. Weeks 5–7 show the network collapsing inward. Indian Ocean relay ports have filled up, and carriers are now redirecting cargo to the nearest UAE alternative — Fujairah, Khawr Fakkan, Sharjah — and when those fill, to the next nearest. The Fujairah → Khawr Fakkan lane is the starkest illustration: 496 shipments in Week 7, versus zero in the first four weeks. This is not new capacity — it is secondary congestion.
Jebel Ali’s import dwell of 46.9 days tells the same story. The port is not clearing; it is accumulating.
A Strait reopening would not resolve this quickly. A 47-day backlog takes weeks to clear even at full capacity, and the structural schedule changes carriers have made do not reverse overnight.