EIA can explain why Hormuz matters. It cannot prove Hormuz has reopened. Its Today in Energy page calls the Strait of Hormuz a critical oil chokepoint amid regional conflict, which is exposure evidence, not passage evidence. [1]

The paper's June 13 account of mine teams and insurers deciding Hormuz set the boring standard: safe-channel maps, insurer notices, port circulars, AIS behavior, war-risk pricing, and crew-safety records. EIA's world oil transit chokepoints page belongs in that story as scale and geography. [2] It is not a shipmaster's clearance.

The Short-Term Energy Outlook's global oil page is useful for price and supply context. [3] But an outlook is still an outlook. It does not say whether a vessel can transit under ordinary commercial terms, whether a port has issued instructions, or whether an insurer has lowered exclusions.

That distinction is the reader service. MSM can cite EIA to make the market exposure large. X can cite the same chokepoint language to make panic large. Neither move is the operating receipt.

The next useful document will be dull. It will not be a map explaining that Hormuz is important. It will be a notice showing ships, insurers, ports, and crews treating the strait as ordinary again.

-- DAVID CHEN, Beijing