Some ships making it through Strait of Hormuz, but 'it's a very small amount'

A local tracker of fuel tankers in the Strait of Hormuz says a few laden ships are coming out and heading towards the ports where New Zealand gets its fuel stocks.

But Starboard Maritime Intelligence has also spotted 35 large tankers that were not moving, full with up to 60 million barrels of crude "locked on hulls behind the strait", and unable to get out past the double Iran-and-US blockades.

"We're seeing a few coming out and heading to places where we'd like to see them to go, the likes of Singapore and up round to Korea," said Starboard analyst Mark Douglas on Wednesday.

"But compared to pre-conflict, it's a very small amount."

It would take more than six months for the oil supply chain to get back to normal, even in a best-case scenario, Douglas said.

Oil prices have fluctuated in response to stuttering Iran-US peace talks.

Overall fuel stocks in New Zealand remained well above minimum requirements, according to the latest MBIE fuel update on Wednesday.

But fuel prices registered as the fourth biggest concern for New Zealanders in a recent poll.

Starboard Maritime tracks ships in real time, and feeds maritime data to 11 government agencies - including the NZ Defence Force - as part of the national security Data Fusion System.

"We're very proud to be helping the New Zealand government," Douglas said.

But many ships caught up the Straits of Hormuz stand-off had turned off the Automatic Identification System transponders used in tracking.

"Because when you're in the middle of a war zone, you don't really want to be transmitting your location. But they do come on and off every so often."

More tankers that were not trapped were heading off their usual beaten path to West Africa, the American Gulf coast and South America instead to pick up crude oil, he said.

"The bright spot is that there has been a repositioning of vessels and it's continuing to provide some kind of supply from those locations and bring them to the refineries that matter for New Zealand.

"It's not making up for the entire difference that losing access to the Persian Gulf has caused, but it is allowing the refineries to continue to operate."

Less than 10 percent of pre-war fuel was making it out of the strait.

Supply chain disruptions would persist while the re-routed tankers fulfilled current contracts, before they could think about heading back to the Persian Gulf.

"Continuation of voyages to alternative suppliers will show that suppliers are continuing to hedge against further disruption in the Gulf, and also that damage to Gulf loading infrastructure means that loading at pre-conflict rates isn't yet possible," Douglas said in a statement earlier on Wednesday.

"This will be a transition over time."

The interim period was likely to last "longer than six months before the supply chain returns to something close to normal".

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