Post by Arsenio Longo

A tender can reveal more than a traffic count. AGBI - Arabian Gulf Business Insight's Francesca Washtell has a useful piece out today on why shipowners remain reluctant to send vessels back through Hormuz despite last week's ceasefire and the phased reopening of the strait. The IOC tender, seeking tankers for crude and LPG from Gulf ports attracted no bids. That is worth pausing on. Vessels already inside the Gulf have every incentive to leave after weeks of waiting with committed cargoes. Sending fresh ships in is a different calculation entirely: war-risk insurance, uncertain port operations, contested routing, and a security environment that has not yet stabilised. The one-way traffic pattern that Lloyd's List data shows is not a formal restriction. It is a confidence and risk-appetite bottleneck. Those two things require different solutions. A formal restriction lifts when a political agreement is signed. A confidence bottleneck lifts when enough owners have made the transit, priced it, insured it, and reported back. That process takes time and it takes precedent. There is also a structural layer beneath the confidence issue. The IRGC has instructed vessels to use only Tehran-designated routes, while concern over sea mines has pushed some ships toward alternatives. Two parallel routing systems operating simultaneously in the same waterway creates exactly the kind of ambiguity that underwriters price conservatively, and that crews and operators factor into their willingness to proceed at all. The question for the market has moved past whether vessels can physically transit. It is now whether a voyage through Hormuz can be priced, insured and justified by owners, charterers, crews and underwriters simultaneously. Until that threshold is met, headline traffic numbers will continue to flatter the actual state of the reopening. https://lnkd.in/dXYE5wMz #Hormuz #Shipping #MaritimeRisk #Tankers #OilMarket #HUAX