What changed in PANOPT, dated, newest first. It lists what readers can see,
including what broke and how it was fixed. Entries marked fix
correct something that was wrong. What was running at the last Monitor
build is on the status page.
Scored alerts are back, and the Strike Ledger
AlertsHeadlines are scored again from 8 Oct 2026, after a pause from 31 Aug: each alert says what the news means for oil and its knock-on effects, in plain words. A free account sees each headline 30 minutes after it lands, without its score or analysis, and each weekly brief a week after it is published. Pro, which is not on sale yet, has them first.
LedgerThe Strike Ledger is public at /strikes: every claimed strike on an oil refinery, terminal or pipeline since April, linked to its source and graded by who made it, beside NASA's fire detections at that plant on the nights around the claim. It does not rule on whether a strike happened.
Ledger"Normal" is a plant's ordinary days. A day in the two weeks before a claim that was itself an earlier fire is left out of normal and named, so a second strike is measured against the plant at work, not against the first fire.
FireNine plants struck often are now watched: the Yaroslavl, NORSI, Saratov, Novokuibyshevsk, Ufa, Salavat, Orsk and Tuapse refineries and the Port of Taman.
DataThe files behind both ledgers download as CSV from the Terminal's Data tab: every radar pass over the watched seas since 2015, each watched plant's daily satellite heat, and both ledgers with their sources and grades.
fixFifteen plant circles were in the wrong place. Ryazan, Kremenchuk and Kirishi were centred on their towns, 5 to 12 km from the plants; Khartoum's was 17 km off, Karachi's 24 km and Aden's 12 km. Each is now centred on the plant's mapped outline and checked against the flares satellites see there on ordinary days, and the check runs every week.
The ledger goes live, with crossings and a 15-minute fire watch
LedgerThe Chokepoint Ledger is public: /ledger, /hormuz and /bab-el-mandeb, no account needed.
Ledger/hormuz estimates how many ships cross each day from the radar passes, with every step shown, beside each published single-day figure. The estimate is graded E, indicated: a model, not a count.
LedgerA figure reads "~60 ships a day" when its source says about, and "Over 17 million" when it says over.
RadarThe counts say "hulls in open water", crossing or waiting, not "moving": radar sees where a hull is, not where it is going.
FireMeteosat's 15-minute fire product (LSA SAF, EUMETSAT) now watches the 27 plants it can see and flags a large new fire within the hour. Where it cannot see (sea, inland water and wetland, which cover most Gulf terminals), the Monitor says so.
fixFrom 3 Sep to 4 Oct the X reader could not reach X, and the pipeline logged that as "no new posts". A failed read now shows as unavailable.
The Chokepoint Ledger
LedgerA public page for the Strait of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb: the radar count of hulls on every Sentinel-1 pass, beside the traffic figures governments, trackers and analysts have published, each graded by how it is known. The last 90 days of passes download as CSV.
RadarEvery radar pass is now kept for good, and the archive is being read back to 2015 with the same code at the same resolution, so today's count can be set against the years before the war.
The brief on a page, and one look
BriefThe weekly physical-flows brief is a page of the Terminal: the five readings, the radar boxes and their charts, plant heat, US stocks against the five-year band, JODI, fronts and routes. Export PDF downloads the same issue, and its numbers download as a CSV.
LookThe Terminal and these pages take the Situation Monitor's design: flat panels, mono section heads, square corners.
Public pages
PagesA status page that shows what the last Situation Monitor build recorded, and says the status is unknown when that build is late. This changelog.
Monitor, brief and digest
MonitorOne type system, readable greys, a header that fits and a map sized for phones.
MonitorStock changes in one neutral colour, signed with a real minus sign.
MonitorThree clocks, deep links that work, a licensed fallback map and full credits.
MonitorFront lines name sides and towns in plain words; heat that looks like gas flaring is set aside and counted.
fixThe Monitor showed a blank page inside the Terminal; it loads again.
BriefThe weekly physical-flows brief: four pages, every number with its unit, date, count and grade.
DigestThe Telegram digest uses the same plain words as the Monitor, dates its counts and credits its sources.
DesksA desk account that is switched off is removed from the page, not only hidden.
TerminalNothing reads healthy while scoring is offline: tiles, navigation and the price ticker say what is running.
PagesThe sign-in page and the public pages describe what runs today, with one dated reading. Nothing is for sale.
The wire, unscored
WireWhile model scoring is offline, stories from the wire are published unscored, as the wire carried them, each outlet listed and linked.
fixThe Terminal header said all systems were active while scoring was offline; it now says scoring is offline. The push prompt is hidden while nothing is scored.
SourcesPosts from OSINT desks on Bluesky, optical ship counts in the Gulf, and radar hulls checked against ship broadcasts (AIS).
RadarTwo new radar boxes, off Haifa and Ashkelon–Ashdod, where ship broadcasts are received well enough to compare with the radar.
DigestA daily Telegram digest, written by rule from the Monitor's own numbers.
Fronts and the brief
BriefA Fronts page in the brief; every town drawn on a control map can be searched.
MonitorShowing a side fits the map to the towns it holds.
Readers, fronts and the flows brief
ReadersReaders can bring a source to a situation (a link, a note, an optional place). It is shown as a claim, grade D.
ReadersReaders can mark what looks different on a satellite view. Marks are grouped into a grid and shown as claims.
ControlTown control: who holds which settlement, from Wikipedia's conflict map modules, with shaded held areas and an amber band where the front runs.
BriefThe weekly physical-flows brief as a PDF.
MonitorA physical-flows panel on the overview: counts and official series with axes and a CSV, nothing derived.
MonitorShip density from 14 days of radar, and a filmstrip of every kept clear satellite view per site, any two compared.
AirbasesLarge aircraft counted on the aprons of 18 bases from satellite images, with a cloud tally per site.
MonitorEvidence grades, plain and analyst modes, a glossary, how PANOPT sees, search, deep links and a reading guide.
MonitorA week of each instrument's own daily count per situation, as small charts.
PetrolineThe Saudi East–West pipeline's real 1,164 km route and eleven station compounds on it as watched points.
The Monitor in the Terminal
TerminalA Monitor tab: the Situation Monitor inside the Terminal.
fixFour refineries were pinned 18 to 45 km from their flares, so their heat read a false "normal" on no data. They were re-pinned, and the map gained a heat scale.
Map and new instruments
MonitorA licensed vector basemap (OpenFreeMap) over shaded relief, and a loading chip, so a cold load does not show an empty world.
MonitorA phone layout.
SensorsUS crude stocks from the EIA weekly report, public attention from Wikipedia page views, and an aircraft type table.
fixA styling change had silently removed the aircraft layer from the map. It is back.
Eleven more situations
fixThe Situation Monitor presented 31 August as today. It now dates what it shows.
MonitorEleven new theatres and ten situations watched by sensors alone.
SensorsRadar ship counts at the chokepoints (Sentinel-1), city night lights (NASA Black Marble), UK, EU and UN sanctions lists, PANOPT's own internet-connectivity probes, navigational warnings, airspace notices, the UCDP conflict record, GDACS disaster alerts, space weather and a GDELT grid of reported violence.
The Situation Monitor
MonitorThe first Situation Monitor, with live instrument layers: satellite heat, military aircraft, GPS integrity, seismic events, satellite passes and sanctioned tankers seen on AIS.
Scoring offline
ScoringModel scoring went offline. Since then no headline has been scored, and no scored alerts, push alerts or morning and evening briefs have been produced.