Charges, crossings and replacement cargoes around Hormuz
Shipping associations contest proposed Hormuz charges as vessel crossings fall sharply and Sinopec books Russian cargoes to replace reduced Middle East supply.
Geopolitics··Midday
A dispute over the terms of passage
Eight large shipowner and operator associations have written to United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and International Maritime Organization Secretary-General Arsenio Dominguez to oppose compulsory charges for transit through the Strait of Hormuz. Their letter describes such charges as a significant departure from established international practice. The report identifies the associations as representing major owners and operators, so the intervention concerns the terms under which ships would use the passage rather than an individual voyage. The account does not say that a charge has already been collected, nor does it supply a new tariff. It records an organized objection to compulsory payment and directs it to the two international bodies named in the letter. That leaves the immediate issue as a dispute over the rules for moving through the strait.[1]
Traffic data show fewer crossings
A separate shipping-data report puts numbers on movement through the region. Kpler data showed two commodity vessels crossing the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday, after eight crossings the day before. At Bab el-Mandeb, the number of commodity vessels was reported to have fallen from 20 to one in the same one-day comparison. The Reuters report carried by Al-Monitor placed that decline alongside two tanker attacks announced by the Houthis on Wednesday. It does not establish from the figures alone why every vessel did or did not move. The reported counts nevertheless distinguish the two choke points and show that the decline was described at both of them, with the Hormuz comparison measured against the preceding day and the Bab el-Mandeb comparison measured over a day.[2]
A refiner replaces barrels
The supply response described in another report takes place at the buyer's end of the route. Trade sources who requested anonymity and ship-tracking data indicated that Sinopec had booked 30 to 40 cargoes of Russian ESPO crude. The report says the world's largest refiner was increasing Far East Russian purchases to compensate for Middle East supply reduced by the Iran war. The booking figure is therefore presented as a response to a stated supply shortfall, not as a measure of traffic through either strait. Kpler's two-versus-eight Hormuz comparison and its twenty-to-one Bab el-Mandeb comparison are vessel counts, whereas the Sinopec figure is cargoes. The letter from shipping associations does not set the price or availability of these cargoes, and the traffic counts do not identify the buyers of every vessel. Read together, the three reports track different parts of the same corridor: a proposed condition of passage, observed crossings and an oil buyer's replacement purchases. They do not turn those different observations into a single confirmed chain of cause and effect. The 20 count belongs to Bab el-Mandeb.[3]
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