A day after a rush to exit the Strait of Hormuz started, tanker traffic at the chokepoint is dwindling again as shippers pull back from immediate passage amid the collapsed U.S.-Iran talks before they even began.
On Friday morning, no tanker was observed to have moved outbound from the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz, according to vessel-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg.
Donald Trump said, “We didn’t meet out of desperation, Iran did. They are FINISHED! We’ll play out the 60 days. They get no money, not ten cents!”
Inbound into the Gulf, one Norway-flagged products tanker and one Iran-linked LPG carrier made the crossing on Friday, according to observable data of tankers that haven’t gone dark.
The thin Friday traffic compares to dozens of vessels that left the Gulf outbound from the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday, which marked the reopening of the chokepoint.
A total of 18 transits were recorded across the June 17 to 18 window, the highest single-window count of the conflict, according to data from maritime intelligence firm Windward. Chinese-affiliated, Chinese-linked, European, Japanese, and Saudi tonnage were among the early departures.
Three Saudi-flagged supertankers carrying approximately six million barrels of crude transited the Strait dark in the hours following the signing of the U.S.-Iran deal, Windward noted.
In addition, tankers carrying a total of 80 million barrels of crude were preparing to move through the Strait of Hormuz.
But this reopening was put into question by the collapse of the U.S.-Iran talks even before they began. The talks were set to begin in Switzerland on Friday after the memorandum of understanding started the 60-day countdown for negotiations for a deal.
The U.S.-Iran deal has raised hopes that the oil supply disruption in the Middle East could be nearing its end, but the biggest international tanker operators aren’t rushing to return to the Strait of Hormuz.
“Given the experiences in the last couple of months, I think it’s reasonable to assume that it may take at least a couple of weeks or if not a month,” Jotaro Tamura, chief executive officer at Mitsui OSK Lines, the world’s largest tanker operator, told the Financial Times in a recent interview.
By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com
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