London (AFP) – Just a trickle of cargo ships and tankers — most of them Iranian — have made it through the Strait of Hormuz since Iranian forces effectively blocked the crucial trade route in the Middle East war. Here are facts and figures about vessels that have passed through the 167-kilometre (104-mile) long strait since the war broke out with US-Israeli strikes on Iran on February 28.
– **95% shipping drop**
From March 1 to 0400 GMT on March 23, commodities carriers made just 138 crossings, according to analytics firm Kpler — a 95 percent decrease from peacetime. Of these, 87 crossings were by oil and gas tankers and more than half were loaded, Kpler data showed, with most travelling east out of the strait. “Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz continues to be severely disrupted,” shipping intelligence journal Lloyd’s List said in its latest update Monday. Its editor Richard Meade has noted bulk carriers, tankers, and container ships make up most of the traffic. He said the week to last Thursday saw an “uptick in gas carriers moving” through the maritime chokepoint.
– **New approved route?**
On Monday, three further vessels — two Indian-flagged tankers carrying liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and a China-bound oil carrier — became the latest to navigate the strait, according to Kpler’s monitoring service MarineTraffic. The Jag Vasant and Pine Gas, both Indian flagged, were each carrying around 45,000 metric tonnes of LPG when they left the waterway, having loaded up in the UAE and Kuwait respectively in late February, according to Bloomberg and MarineTraffic. The Panama-flagged Bright Gold left the strait carrying around 40,000 metric tonnes of methane and was due to arrive in China on April 13. The trio — not included in Kpler’s overall tally update — appeared to have used a purported Tehran-approved route around Larak Island just off the Iranian coast. Meade has said that governments including China, India, Pakistan, Iraq, and Malaysia seemed to have been in direct talks with Tehran, “coordinating vessel transits” with its Revolutionary Guards. Lloyd’s List noted last week that at least nine ships had by that time passed through the apparent Iranian-approved “corridor” for vetting by its authorities. Two of the vessels navigating it Monday — the Bright Gold and the Indian tanker Pine Gas — kept their AIS transponders on, a rare occurrence for a non-Iranian vessel in the current climate.
– **Iranian, Greek, Chinese ships**
The biggest proportion of ships to have passed through the strait are owned or flagged in Iran, followed by Greek and Chinese carriers, Bridget Diakun, an analyst at Lloyd’s List Intelligence, said last week. “Although Iran is continuing to control the Strait and exit its own oil, everything else is largely still at a standstill,” Meade previously noted.
– **51 sanctioned ships**
Overall since the war started, more than 40 percent of the ships transiting the strait have been under US, EU, or UK sanctions, according to an AFP analysis of passage data. Of the oil and gas tankers, nearly 59 percent were under sanctions. Since March 16, “anything heading westbound has been shadow fleet, gas carriers, or tankers…they absolutely dominate the traffic going through,” Diakun told the Lloyd’s briefing.
– **Oil to China**
Commodities analysts at JPMorgan bank have noted that most of the oil passing through the strait was headed for Asia, principally China. Cichen Shen, Asia Pacific editor at Lloyd’s List, said there were indications online that Chinese authorities were working on “some sort of exit plan” for their big tankers stuck in the region.
– **1.3 million barrels of Iranian oil**
The JPMorgan analysts said overall 98 percent of the observable oil traffic through the strait was Iranian, averaging 1.3 million barrels a day “in early March.” A fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas passes through the strait in peacetime.
© 2024 AFP
