Japan’s Mitsui OSK Lines, the world’s largest tanker operator, expects the shipping disruptions at the Strait of Hormuz to continue for longer than previously expected, with no normalization by the end of the year, due to this week’s re-escalation of hostilities.
“Given the current situation, it’s difficult to see operations resuming in any form by the end of the year,” Mitsui OSK Lines’ chief executive Jotaro Tamura told Bloomberg in an interview published on Thursday.
In a quarterly financial report last month, Mitsui OSK assumed that “navigation around the Strait of Hormuz will gradually resume from October 2026 and be normalized in January 2027.”
However, the recent flare-up of hostilities, with the first strikes the U.S. and Iran exchanged in more than a month, has led to deterioration of the situation.
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“The situation continues to be well beyond the level of risk we can accept,” the executive told Bloomberg.
Mitsui OSK does not currently plan to return to shipping oil through the Strait of Hormuz, due to the elevated risks, the executive told Bloomberg. The situation needs to de-escalate, and the tanker giant needs to see guarantees and evidence of sustainably safe passage through the chokepoint to consider returning to the route, Tamura added.
Since the re-escalation early this week, traffic at the Strait of Hormuz has slumped to a handful of observable transits per day, although dark crossings have helped sneak more volumes out of the Persian Gulf in recent weeks.
The latest flare-up, however, could discourage some shippers again. As a result, the market grows concerned that the re-escalation is putting at risk the estimated tentative recovery of oil flows from the Middle East in the past weeks.
Resource-poor Japan, for its part, is preparing an energy import diversification plan that will include stipulations about support for pipelines in the Middle East aimed at diverting export oil flows away from the Strait of Hormuz.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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