Vessel traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has declined this week from the prior week amid uncertainty about the U.S.-Iran talks and the potential reopening of the Middle East’s key oil and LNG chokepoint.
Between Monday and Thursday, a total of 33 vessels transited the Strait of Hormuz, down from 50 for the same days last week, according to ship-tracking data monitored by Reuters.
On Thursday, as the market was expecting a draft Iran-Oman proposal for management of the Strait, four vessels moved through Hormuz, per Kpler data.
Only six crude oil tankers have managed to clear the Strait of Hormuz outbound so far this week, according to Kpler’s analysis cited by Reuters.
Vessel traffic at the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait crumbled earlier this week amid a Houthi claim they had hit a Saudi oil tanker in the Red Sea and hopes that Oman and Iran could reach a deal on jointly managing Hormuz.
Analysts at security and vessel-tracking firms told the BBC this week that the threats to shipping in the Gulf and the Red Sea have escalated to the worst safety situation since the Iran war began.
The market hopes of U.S.-Iran talks and an Iran-Oman deal on the management of the Strait of Hormuz appear to be dwindling at the end of this week.
Iran signaled a much more restrictive regime for vessel traffic than thought, with proposals under review at its parliament to ban U.S. and Israeli ships from transiting the Strait, while other nations that Tehran deems have harmed it would pay compensation for moving through Hormuz.
“Despite clear signs of progress in recent days, the tenor of the rhetoric and growing distrust between the US and Iran mean things could go from bad to worse once again,” ING’s commodities strategists Warren Patterson and Ewa Manthey wrote in a note early on Friday.
In Friday trade in Asia, oil prices jumped with Brent Crude topping $83 per barrel, after the Iran-aligned Houthis in Yemen struck Saudi Arabia’s southern province of Najran in the latest flare-up of Middle Eastern hostilities, killing 11 civilians.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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