The Strait of Hormuz must be cleared of 80 mines before normal shipping can resume, The Guardian cited independent tanker owner trade body Intertanko as saying on Friday.
“The main route… through the middle of the Strait of Hormuz, that’s closed, that’s dangerous,” Phil Belcher, Intertanko marine director, stated.
“This is like a highway where the road in the middle is closed, and you are using the hard shoulder,” Belcher said. “We need to get the highway open so we can get the volume of traffic through safely. One of the big issues we’ve got at the moment is the navigational risk, the risk of running aground on the rocks. It’s very close to the rocks on the southern route, the Omani route.”
Richard Meade, editor-in-chief at the maritime data provider Lloyd’s List, said that he doesn’t believe the traffic through the Strait of Hormuz will return to normal before the end of the year.
Ocean and air freight analytics firm Xeneta’s chief analyst, Peter Sand, agreed that it would take time for the strait to be fully reopened as it was previously.
“Even if the ceasefire holds, around 10% of global container shipping capacity is impacted by the blockade and freight rates are spiraling across major trades,” Sand said. “This scale of disruption and market volatility cannot be reversed overnight.”
Shipping companies concerned over possibility of tolling Strait of Hormuz
Even once the strait was reopened, some expressed concern over the possibility of a toll on vessels passing through it, the Guardian reported.
A spokesperson for the German shipping company Hapag-Lloyd has previously said that it was “fundamentally wrong” to charge vessels for passage through international waters.
“Tolls for infrastructure such as the Suez or Panama canals are different, as they reflect major infrastructure investments,” a spokesperson told the Guardian. “That’s not the case in the Strait of Hormuz.”
On Saturday, US President Donald Trump announced that there would be no tolls on the Strait of Hormuz during the 60-day negotiation period, adding that there would also be no tolls afterward “unless they are imposed by and for the United States of America.”
These tolls would be imposed, Trump stated, “for services rendered as the Guardian Angel to the countries of the Middle East for purposes of both past, present, and future reimbursement of costs.”
Goldie Katz contributed to this report.
