Iran claims the Strait of Hormuz is closed again. Few ships were leaving in the first place
Omani students visit the waters around Qaboos Port where oil tankers
(CNN) — Even before Iran announced Saturday that the Strait of Hormuz was again closed, ship operators had pulled back on sailings through the critical channel.
Twenty-five ships traveled through the critical channel on Thursday, according to data from marine intelligence firm Kpler. However, lead oil analyst Matt Smith told CNN the number of tankers fell back to single digits on Friday after the first round of talks between Iran and the United States to work out the details of their agreement was canceled.
“It’s not like you’re suddenly seeing a mass exodus,” Smith said. “You’re seeing a pickup in traffic… but not material. We are still not at the point where a ‘first mover’ is emerging.”
Thursday’s vessel traffic was the highest since mid-April, when Iran briefly opened the Strait to commercial traffic. However, it was still a fraction of the 100 to 120 tankers that sailed through the passage between Iran and Oman daily before the war, said Smith.
Nearly 500 ships, including 220 oil tankers, have been trapped in the Persian Gulf since the start of the war. Despite both the Iran and United States signing an agreement to end the fighting, various experts agree it will take months for ship traffic and oil flows to get back to normal.
Smith said that’s because ship operators are feeling hesitant. He expects it will take weeks for the approximately 120 tankers filled with oil in the Gulf to exit, and longer still for the 100 empty tankers to fill up and leave.
Ships are still uncertain about where it’s safe to sail and the proper procedures for passage, according to Jakob Larsen, chief safety and security officer at the Baltic and International Maritime Council (BIMCO), a major international organization of ship operators.
“Despite the signing of the ceasefire agreement, we believe the security situation for the shipping industry remains volatile,” he said in a statement to CNN Thursday. “The central part of the Strait is mined and unnavigable, and only the inshore traffic zones close to Oman and Iran are reportedly free of mines.”
However, congestion and navigational incidents in that inshore area also make it risky passage for ships at this time, he added.
There are an estimated 20,000 crew members still stuck on ships in the Persian Gulf. Many seafarers are eager to leave, even if there is nervousness about the safety in doing so, said Ben Bailey, director of programme for Mission to Seafarers, a charity that serves crewmembers aboard ships.
“I suppose the term would be a kind of cautious optimism,” Bailey said on Friday about the seafarer’s hopes of leaving soon.
For ship owners, there are also concerns that maritime insurers have yet to declare they will cover damage from war risk. Maritime insurers withdrew such coverage in the first days of the war and have yet to restore it for most clients.
“It wasn’t just Iran that shut down the Strait of Hormuz, it was Lloyds of London and similar companies,” said Tom Kloza, an independent oil analyst and adviser to Gulf Oil.
Beyond risk, there are also practical issues, like if ships are still seaworthy after being anchored for more than three months or if they have the fuel and supplies needed sail, said Lloyds Market Association, a trade association of marine insurance underwriters.
Bailey said there’s also the need to scrape off barnacles that had attached themselves to ships while anchored for months.
“It’s not a case of just saying the light is now green. Everyone can start your engines and off you go,” he said.
But even if ships sail immediately, that doesn’t mean oil production in the Persian Gulf will return to normal. Much of the production and refining in the region was shut down early in the war when tankers were cut off, and restarting will be a slow process.
Once it does, new tankers will then need to travel back to pick up new shipments of oil. The last thing vessel owners want is to sail back into the Persian Gulf and once again be stuck for several months, said Kloza.
That requires confidence among tanker operators that this peace agreement will hold long-term.
“We don’t know the answer to that,” said Kloza. “Maybe it gets viewed as a safe piece of water, but I think we’ve got a long way to go till we get to that.”
The-CNN-Wire
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