Shipping traffic through Hormuz still largely halted

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LONDON – Shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz remained broadly halted on April 21, with only three ships passing the waterway in the past 24 hours, shipping data showed.

A US blockade of Iranian ports has infuriated Tehran, prompting it to maintain its own restrictions on the strait, which typically handles roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas supply.

The Ean Spir products tanker, which had no known flag or ownership, sailed through the Strait of Hormuz on April 21 after calling at an Iraqi port, ship tracking data on the MarineTraffic platform showed.

The Lian Star cargo ship, which also had no known flag or ownership, sailed through the strait from an Iranian port, the data showed.

Separately, the Meda liquefied petroleum gas tanker, which had called at a United Arab Emirates port in the Gulf and also had no known flag or ownership, crossed the strait on April 20 in its second attempt to leave the Gulf after turning back previously, according to satellite analysis from data analytics specialist SynMax.

Those figures are a fraction of the 140 ships that sailed through daily before the US-Israel war with Iran began on Feb 28.

More than a dozen tankers passed through the strait after Iran briefly declared it open on April 17, before Tehran announced on April 18 that it was closed and opened fire on vessels.

“Even vessels that seemingly check the publicly known boxes for successful transit through both blockades can find themselves in danger and unable to pass,” shipbroker BRS said in a note this week.

A ceasefire between the US and Iran appeared in jeopardy on April 21, with Tehran not committing to new peace talks and the US military saying it had seized a tanker linked to Iran in international waters.

Seafarers’ lives at risk

Hundreds of ships and 20,000 seafarers remain stuck in the Gulf, unable to sail.

“We cannot put at risk the lives of the seafarers,” Mr Arsenio Dominguez, secretary-general of the UN’s shipping agency, told reporters on the sidelines of the Singapore Maritime Week on April 21.

“We saw what happened last weekend, that on Friday, when some ships started to sail. Then there was an announcement that the strait was closed, and then some ships were actually targeted. Thankfully, we didn’t have any casualties and there was no damage to the vessels.”

Iran’s army said an Iranian tanker had entered its territorial waters from the Arabian Sea on April 20 with help from the Iranian navy, despite what it described as repeated warnings and threats from the US naval task force.

Shipbroker BRS estimated that 61 non-Iran-related supertankers were trapped inside the Gulf at present, 50 of which were laden with cargoes of up to two million barrels each.

“At a time when the world is desperate for crude oil, an additional two million barrels slipping out of the Middle East Gulf would be gratefully received,” BRS said. REUTERS