Stocks as the inland substitute
Emmanuel Macron said on Friday at the Élysée that he intended to convene a G7 meeting devoted to energy in the coming weeks, aiming in particular to move toward better coordination on stock levels. The same day he wrote that the fuel-price rise came from blockages in the Strait of Hormuz and, more recently, in the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, not from government decisions. No meeting date and no release decision were announced; his own wording ties stock coordination to the strait bill.[1]
Defence Minister Guido Crosetto said Italy had the capabilities to protect its commercial vessels through Bab al-Mandeb and would not wait for a joint decision from the European Union. In the Al Jazeera report the strait is the narrow corridor for oil, gas and container traffic heading to and from the Suez Canal; roughly 12% to 15% of global trade has historically passed through it. Macron’s stock sentence and Crosetto’s national escort look at the same node: when transit gets expensive, the cargo is paid either at sea as insurance and escort, or inland as inventory.[1], [2]
The eleven-ship invoice is still open
In late July the same writer noted that only 11 commodity vessels passed through the strait on Sunday, and that Hormuz has no alternative while Bab al-Mandeb has an expensive detour. Friday’s Italian preparation shows a national escort list being stood up ahead of EU coordination while that detour is still being priced. Crosetto warned that if the waterway became impassable the economic consequences would be severe; that is the name of the bill if transit stops, not a verified closure.[3], [2]
The price spike could also have come from Hormuz alone; Macron named that strait first. Stock coordination does not raise the ship count; it tries to put the inland buffer into joint use. The signal to watch is whether G7 members announce a product release with volumes. If they do not, the bill stays in insurance premia and the escort list.[1], [3]