Shipping Companies to Avoid Hormuz for Weeks

Shipowners will not resume voyages through the Strait of Hormuz for several weeks, until they are confident that the agreement being finalized by the United States and Iran has produced tangible changes on the ground.

Jotaro Tamura, chief executive of Japan’s Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, told the Financial Times that a political agreement alone would not be enough.

“What will have to come in place is not just a simple agreement between the relevant countries, but it has to be material and translated into the real situations in the Strait of Hormuz, so that shipping lines can make themselves comfortable to go through”, he said.

Tamura expected it to take at least a couple of weeks, and possibly a month, before voyages resumed.

The war, which began on 28 February with US-Israeli strikes on Iran, largely halted shipping through a route used for around one-fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas supplies, as well as aluminum and urea.

US President Donald Trump said ships carrying oil had begun leaving the strait along the southern route, which he described as “totally safe, secure, and pristine”.

(reuters, est)