More Tankers Make It Through the Strait of Hormuz

Two liquefied natural gas carriers and a supertanker have traversed the Strait of Hormuz over the past couple of days, with the LNG vessels heading for Pakistan and China, and the tanker, loaded with Iraqi crude, is en route to China.

According to a Reuters report, the vessels used the route that Iran has told all ships to use from now on. The LNG carriers are loaded with Qatari gas, the report said, citing data from LSEG and Kpler. At least one of the vessels was loaded in late March. The supertanker carrying Iraqi Basrah crude loaded its cargo in late February and had been stuck in Hormuz since then.

Bloomberg, meanwhile, reported that ADNOC has been using its own fleet of tankers to ship oil and gas through the Strait of Hormuz in so-called dark mode, where vessels switch off their geolocation indicators to remain unnoticed.

Reports about tankers passing through the Strait of Hormuz have multiplied over the past couple of weeks. Two supertankers exited Hormuz last week and headed for their final destination in China, earlier reports said, and another two LNG carriers also made it through the strait and are en route to India, media reported earlier in May.

Some vessels have been passing through the chokepoint in dark mode, switching off their transponders to avoid detection from the Iranian military. Since early March, hundreds of vessels, including tankers carrying energy commodities, have been stranded in the Persian Gulf west of the Strait of Hormuz amid the de facto closure of the chokepoint, but the past couple of weeks have seen some moving out.

According to data from Bloomberg cited by Zerohedge last week, at least 19 tankers carrying crude oil and liquefied petroleum gas from Gulf states other than Iran had traversed the Strait of Hormuz since March 1. Another 100 tankers, however, remain paralyzed in the strait, the data also showed.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

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