The status of the Strait of Hormuz remains further in doubt as various Gulf states have postponed an expected Monday meeting with Iran over the future of the vital shipping corridor.

Oman was due to host the meeting to discuss negotiations aimed at reopening the strait to all traffic, but the Gulf state’s foreign minister Sayyid Badr Albusaidi announced overnight that the meeting had been postponed “in the interests of consensus”.

Iranian delegates said the postponement was at the request of Saudi Arabia, which has recently endured a new series of attacks from Yemen’s Houthis. The Houthis said they fired dozens of missiles and drones at a military airbase in southern Saudi Arabia, which they called a retaliation for hundreds of Saudi airstrikes on Yemen in recent days.

In a potential direct impact on shipping, the militant group had captured territories on Yemen’s coast Thursday and Friday, giving the Iran-aligned group a central stronghold in the Red Sea’s southern maritime chokepoint, the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.

Last week’s Houthi advance has not deterred more container shipping industry players from attempting to make a wider return to the Bab el-Mandeb and Red Sea. Major ocean carriers had largely avoided the Suez Canal route since late 2023 when the Houthis started attacking commercial vessels in solidarity with Palestinians during the Israel-Hamas war, but many are implementing some level of gradual return to the waterway.

Chinese carriers Cosco Shipping and subsidiary Orient Overseas Container Line (OOCL) have joined Ocean Alliance partner CMA CGM to resume Red Sea transits on their jointly operated Europe/Mediterranean-Asia services starting Tuesday, according to a report from Linerlytica.

Five services operated by Cosco and OOCL ships will start their eastbound Suez transits starting Tuesday with the OOCL Portugal. The Cosco Spain and Cosco Taurus debark on Wednesday, while the Cosco Kilimanjaro will kickstart on Sept. 20. OOCL Denmark will depart on Sept. 28.

The carriers join Hapag-Lloyd and Maersk who have separately announced an expansion of their trans-Suez routing on both directions via six services since the summer.

These moves leave Cosco and OOCL’s Ocean Alliance partner Evergreen and all three Premier Alliance members Ocean Network Express (ONE), HMM and Yang Ming as the remaining main carriers that have yet to return a ship to the Red Sea.

For the week of Sept. 13-20, major carriers are expected to make 27 transits through the Suez Canal, according to Linerlytica. Maersk vessels will make 10 transits while eight CMA CGM ships will travel through the passage.

In total, 256 crossings were made in the week prior, from Sept. 7-13, according to data from ship tracking intelligence provider MarineTraffic. This was up 3.2 percent from the published 248 crossings during the previous week.

Traffic fell sharply from 42 transits on Thursday to 24 crossings Friday immediately after the Houthi capture of the Port of Mokha, but recovered to a weekly high of 43 transits on Sunday, providing little evidence so far of a sustained volume shock.

Ana Subasic, a trade risk analyst at MarineTraffic, said Monday the corridor remained “materially more active” than the Strait of Hormuz, running at roughly 2.2 times its volumes. Strait of Hormuz crossings totaled 118 for the same week, up 53.2 percent from 77 the week prior. While the traffic rebounded strongly overall, it remained volatile, with a sharp midweek slowdown.

Carriers have felt more comfortable bringing ultra-large container vessels through the area even with the hostilities in the Middle East lingering.

According to data from shipping publication and intelligence company Lloyd’s List, crossings through the Bab el-Mandeb strait by ships above 18,000 20-foot equivalent units (TEUs) have jumped from one in 2025 to 44 so far this year.

Linerlytica says the total capacity of ships diverted to the Cape of Good Hope around southern Africa has dropped to a two-year low of 4.6 percent of the global fleet.

The selective return of services to the Suez Canal is restoring effective capacity on Asia-Europe routes, which could put downward pressure on freight rates, according to Drewry. Early booking remains important as congestion and blank sailings can tighten capacity.

As container shipping braves out the Red Sea journey, the widening conflict is delivering more of an impact on the oil market.

Drone attacks from Tehran-backed militias in Iraq last Thursday forced Saudi Arabia to close a critical 750-mile oil pipeline that the kingdom had used to export the commodity as an alternative to the Strait of Hormuz.

If the pipeline remains shut for more than a few days, it could cut off as much as 4 percent of global oil supply, according to estimates. Regional officials said Monday that the pipeline will mostly be out of service for weeks as the damage is repaired.

The escalation has sent oil prices back over $100 per barrel. Brent crude oil futures jumped 3.6 percent to $108.38 as of 11 a.m. Monday.

Meanwhile, Iran’s Persian Gulf Strait Authority issued a list of 77 ships it said had violated its protocols for operating in the Strait of Hormuz. Any ship on the list would face “restrictions on future passages, including fines, detention or confiscation.”