Lots More on the Seaborne Chaos Around the Strait of Hormuz

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You can find new episodes of the Blue Bag Daybake Europe podcast by 7am in Dublin or 8am in Brussels, Berlin and Paris. On Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. There's a little bit of debate over Anton's own naval experience, but we can get into that. But Anton, you have some naval experience sort of. Welcome. Are you teaming it up for Margo to make fun of me now? Because I was just a reservist, so I fully embrace the fact that I do not have grand military experience. Okay, I served. I was a reservist. I put on the uniform. I wish you could still fit. I heard you played a lot of tennis. I played tennis in rota Spain. On a meadow exercise, I'll have you no trace. I thought that was a meadow military exercise. And I don't think I remember that. Your exercise was tennis. For your exercise, we played tennis. Yeah, by the way, I can say that. Paras de la Frantera was fantastic for wine and sherry. So, you know. Joe, I want a t-shirt that says ruthless utility maximizer. Black gold! Let's talk about losers. Who cares? I've decided I'm going to base my entire personality going forward on campaigning for a strategic pork reserve in the US. Skulls unlimited. Ooh, what's the ticker for that? No, I think that like in a couple of years, the AI will do a really good job of making the outlaws podcast. How do I get more popular and successful? One day that person will have the mandate of heaven, we do have the perfect guess. You're listening to lots more where we catch up with friends about what's going on right now. Because even when the odd lots is over, there's always lots more. And we really do have the perfect guess. I feel a little bit stupid. Go on. But on Monday, obviously the worst. Wait, just now for the first time. No, just kidding. Last show. Thank you. Obviously, the wherewitharan happened on the weekend and is still happening. And on Monday, I woke up and I was thinking about energy markets and geopolitics in the Middle East. And I was trying to think of someone who would be really good to talk about shipping. And I'm embarrassed to say it took me a full 24 hours to remember that we actually have marine chaos experts basically on speed dial at the moment. Well, it's perfect because we are experiencing marine chaos. Obviously, we're recording this March 4th yesterday. Trump posted on truth social talking about the US actually playing a role as sort of an insurer of last resort because one of the things that we've been seeing is like setting aside the sort of logistical ability to get goods out of the region, get whatever out of the region. There's obviously the question, can you get insurance and we know that prices are soaring, etc. Insurance cost getting too high could end trade flows regardless of the actual logistics on the ground and so on. Well, not just insurance premiums getting too high, but insurance being pulled all together. Just getting pulled all together. That's right. So they are their own entity that's sort of like separate from national. There's nations and then there's insurers and they have quite a bit of say over what moves and when and where. Well, all of this just confirms my long running suspicion as you know that insurers actually control the world in a very underappreciated way. We should talk to, we need to insert like a sound effect here. Speed dial, our marine chaos experts. They are of course Margot Brock and Anton Posner. They're the founders of Mercury Group, which specializes in dry cargo and global freight logistics. So really the perfect people to talk to about this moment. Let's just talk about what you're seeing right now with the Strait of Hormuz. You have a lot of clients who I assume have some presence there. Again, you guys sort of specialize in dry bulk, dry cargo, but you have a good handle on what's going on. What are you seeing and witnessing and living through at the moment? Sure. Yeah, it's always great for us to be under a marine chaos time, right? I mentioned a Tracy yesterday. I think that's going to be new business cards for Margot and that's going to be a chaos expert. So in addition, certainly they take things off right. In addition to everyone knows oil and gas are flowing through Strait of Hormuz and Persian Gulf, which is always the headline commodity sector that everyone talks about in the region. You also have things like outbound fertilizers coming out of the region. You have outbound aluminum being produced by Emirates Global Aluminum in Quattalum and Alba, aluminum bar rain. You have inbound raw materials for the aluminum production. Luminah that goes into aluminum production, you know, that needs to flow in. You have containerized goods, right? You have inbound grains going into the Persian Gulf. So there's a lot more than just oil and gas that's affected when there's a problem in the region. Right now we're seeing our world that's heavy on metals. Of course, it's being affected by the inability for Gulf aluminum producers to be able to ship aluminum out and moving out of the Gulf. So that's already created a spike in global aluminum markets and there's a shift at the moment going on. I think ever in global aluminum was the one that said they're going to start fulfilling orders with aluminum stockposit they have at other parts of the world. So we're starting to see an effect on the markets that we're involved in. Of course, overall diesel in the United States jumped significantly over the past couple of days. So we're going to see that trickle down effect coming into the world of our in-lil logistics in North America, barge freight on the river system, truck freight, rail freight where we're going to start seeing potentially start seeing fuel surge charges kick into effect as diesel starts to move up. And then so talk to us about the insurance components because there's the, yeah, there's the sort of reality of moving goods and then there's the question of can you get these shipments insured? Well, can I just say I don't understand insurance where like you haven't a war risk insurance policy. Something happens and the insurers are like actually we're going to cancel all the war risk insurance. Yeah, explain how this market works. Yeah. Well, war risk is an interesting component of your policy because depending upon where the policy is written and what the custom is if it's a London policy, a US policy, you'll have different terms within your policy, but they all come with a short cancellation notice period on specifically the war risk component. And that cancellation term can be anywhere from say two to seven days. I've heard depending upon whether it's written on London or a US policy or so forth. And that's what's happened. Everyone put out the notice immediately upon the war. And now this week is when all those cancellation dates are hitting. So after that cancellation date, you can rebuy war risk. But now you're going to buy at a significantly increased premium. So what I'm being told is the current market is that we're traditionally your premium, which is assessed on the value, the declared value of your goods. That's what we're ensuring against. So your policy in total, inclusive of your war risk, maybe it might be something around 0.0055% of value. Now to carve out just the add on for war risk, they're seeing offers coming anywhere from 0.5 to 1.5 percent. So this is a 10X30X increase in that premium. Yeah, so that's if you choose to have war risk. And then if you know that will push back into the rest of the conversation that says what ships are actually transiting in war risk areas at this point, because we're seeing the pivot. We're seeing and we're seeing that market dropping off very steeply right now. So what types of goods would continue to flow logically or economically at these new levels? What is the pivot? Yeah, Joe, I think a good answer to that question right up the bat is let's take the cargoes that have no choice. Okay. One of our, our we should pretty team as a client and a ship Carly loading in Saudi Arabia in the Gulf, loading drive all cargo, the ships in port, it's loading the ships. Key and I club the insurance group that ensures the ship has issued the notification of the cancellation on the ships, the ship side insurance, right? You've got two sides you have the cargo insurance, Morgan was talking about in some detail. And then there's also the insurance on the ship. So that ship is loading. It's received the notice that their existing war risk coverage under their ships. P and I protection and indemnity policy has been canceled. They're going to need to renew it. The ship has to continue loading has to eventually sale at some point right when she will lose, but there's no choice but to re up under the higher insurance premium. That ship is already in the Gulf, it's already loaded cargo. So you have the cargo, the cargo interest, the ship or who owns the drive all goods aboard the ship. Going to need to have all risk cargo insurance on their cargo. And then the ship owner also needs to renew their P and I policy covering the ship. And there's no choice. Ships there. So now it's going to be as I think one of the terms as soon as catching up with our ocean freight team earlier is a slug fest of who's going to pay. Margo and I, old professor at York Maritime College of Maritime Law and Insurance with Jeffrey Weiss would have always said, everything we're going to talk about this semester falls into the category of who pays, right? Who's responsible to pay? Professor Weiss was famous for that and that who pays the praise and it comes into play exactly these situations. So just on this point, can I ask you to explain very simply, I guess the ecosystem of insurance and shipping and this idea that you hear about things like the club insurers and then you have the reinsurers and there seem to be all these different layers. There's the insurer for the cargo. There's the insurer for the ship as you laid out. And then there's this question of who's actually going to pay it because you have, I guess, a chain that exists between the charters, the ship owners, the end buyers of the cargo. Can you just lay that out kind of very simply for us? Yeah, right. And of course, we're free people, not insurance experts and all going well without mentioning names and working on connecting, Tracy and I discussed yesterday working on connecting somebody very key at one of the world leading P and I clubs to potentially. Oh, now you've said it in public. So the pressure is the pressure is on. Oh, yeah. Notice I'm not mentioning a gender or a name or anything that gives away anything other than that. So we'll see. Fingers crossed. They're putting an answer in them. Exactly. We've already, you've already gendered the ships. Yeah. Which is it? Sorry. It's a 10. I was just reading something about how, you know, the English doesn't have gendered now with the exceptional ships. Anyway, sorry. Keep going. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, to break it down very simply, right? The ship owner carries protection and indemnity insurance, hull insurance, those policies that cover the ship and its engines and so forth. All of the physical attributes of the vessel and so forth. That's what the ship owner carries on it. Now, in a contract of carriage, whether it's a charter party or a bill of lading, a liner bill of lading, that has a limitation of liability to the cargo owner in that. A contract of carriage. The U.S. laws covered by the carriage of goods by C's Act, COGSA, which typically carries a $500 per package or a per ton limitation of liability. So the ship owner is only liable to a certain extent of value of the goods that the shipper is carrying on the ship. Now we flip over to the cargo owner side and the cargo owner, knowing that the ship owner only has a certain limitation of liability, the cargo owner will go out with the right guidance, will get all risks cargo insurance. And that's to provide them the coverage for the value of the goods that they're carrying on board the ship over and above whatever the ship owner's limitation of liability. It's when there's a casualty and a loss as a cargo owner, you want to be able to collect from your all risk cargo insurance policy and let them fight it out with the ship owner not be stuck in arbitration in London or in Singapore or New York fighting it out later on. And then there's another type of insurance too when you're chartering a ship. As a ship, as a cargo interest, you get charter's liability insurance is pretty common. And that covers the shipper and the cargo interest from other liability elements. Let's say the ship has a casualty and people are killed or hurt, there's going to be lawsuits filed against everyone involved in the ship and charter's liability insurance covers the charter, the cargo interest liability as it relates to in other damages or if the ship is damaged by their steve or is loading the ship or discharging the ship. So other things that can come into play too. So I'm trying to lay it out as clear as possible, but I know it's unbelievable. There's a lot of moving parts. Running a business means dealing with a lot of overly complicated software and most CRM's tend to follow the same pattern. They're packed with endless features you'll never use, interfaces that feel clunky and teams end up spending way too much time just trying to find basic information. Today's sponsor, Pipedrive is a simple CRM tool designed for small and medium businesses. Pipedrive brings you entire sales processes into one dashboard giving you a crystal clear complete view of sales processes and customer information designed to help teams stay in control and close more deals faster. It all centers around the visual sales pipeline where you could see every deal, what stage it's in and what needs to happen next. Since everything is in one platform, Pipedrive is designed to unite your team, keep track of sales tasks and stay on top of your leads. Switch to a CRM built by salespeople, four salespeople and join the over 100,000 companies already using Pipedrive. That's pipedrive.com/simplecrm. Bloomberg Daybreak is your best way to get informed first thing in the morning right in your podcast feed. Hi, I'm Karen Moscow. And I'm Nathan Hager. Each morning we're up early putting together the latest episode of Bloomberg Daybreak U.S. edition. It's your daily 15 minute podcast on the latest in global news, politics and international relations. Listen to the Bloomberg Daybreak U.S. edition podcast each morning for the stories that matter with the context you need. Find us on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you listen. Talk to us about the announcement from Trump that the U.S. could get involved and be some sort of play and insurance role here. What can that do? And is that novel? Is there any precedent for anything like that? Yeah, this news just came out. The president will often say things that then need to be implemented by the bureaucrats, right? So the mechanics are always complicated. There's precedent for U.S. government agencies providing insurance, the export import bank, for example, offers trade credit insurance. Let's take that, for example, right? As for protection and demnity, P&I insurance on ships, I'm sure, although I don't have any specific instances, but I'm sure there's been precedent for that in history. So I don't think that that's too much of a stretch for the government to necessarily come in and offer some kind of safety net for ships to be able to get P&I insurance. But maybe more complicated is Navy, having U.S. Navy or Coast Guard escorting ships to this straight-of-core moose, that's not an easy task. That was done, I think, what was in the 1980s when we reflag tankers put American flags on them to protect them from the Iran Iraq war. At the time, when we had Navy ships escorting ships to the straight-of-war moose, but that is an expensive proposition. It's not perfect, right? Missiles can get through. You're putting U.S. Navy ships, you're taking them out of circulation and out of deployment for other purposes, and you're putting them very much in a arms way. That approach to the straight-of-war moose, navigationaly speaking, is delicate to say at least, and it can be very exposing. What's it like actually sailing through the straight? I have not sailed to the straight-margo, has it either, right? Both of us stayed a lot shoreside after I sailed to the Panama Canal on an Navy tanker, which really would have been popular with Tom Tee and Pulse Weenie one morning, when it looked like we were going to take over Panama the day before. Sorry, Martin. Well, actually, this reminds me. Just setting aside the insurance component, do people want to be moving stuff through the straight-of-war moose at the moment? I imagine if you're captaining or crewing a ship, I would love to captain a ship, by the way, but you wouldn't want to be in the straight at the moment, right? There are human considerations beyond just how am I going to get compensation for the cargo or a lost vessel. Obviously, it's a logistical nightmare to get through there. Safety is a concern personnel. This morning, a small container vessel, I think it was 1800 Tee used, 20-foot units, was hit with, they're saying, an unknown projectile hit it above the water line, put the engine room on fire. They just abandoned ship. They pulled the whole crew off and abandoned ship. I mean, you don't even stay there to fight the fire. You just get out of there. So yeah, people don't want to be there. And if you are on the liquid side, petroleum's crude, you have a harder time avoiding going through that region because of what it is, right? That's the source of a lot of our global oil. But other commodities dry in large part, we can avoid it. So to Anton's comments, the aluminum sector has, in large part, shifted, deviated from that area for now. But in addition, ships are navigating away. And it means a longer transit time, which means a more costly voyage, so it's less desirable. It does increase freight rates. But it's safer. Your goods are safer. And when you start adding on these new war risk premiums, if you're going to take them, adventure to guess it's still cheaper to take the long way around now. So it's the kind of a, for certain liquids, there's no choice. Like, it has to flow through there. It sounds like for some of these other things, aluminum, otherwise, for now, either there's going to be some long route, or it's just that is not going to be a source. If we talk about aluminum, there would just be less aluminum in the world, or some existing source of aluminum will ramp up their production. Right. Like, take the Emirates Global Aluminum, for example, Joe, that our Emirates have a luxury of having ports and the ability to potentially load ships on the Gulf of Oman, the side outside of the Persian Gulf rates. As Margo said, longer route, potentially not ideal. This is not where they typically load. One thing I haven't looked at is Emirates Global Aluminum shifting some of that aluminum loading to ports on the Gulf of Oman. But I think it will take a look at that. But I wanted to say, you know, an entracing question about what a cruise, they don't have any ship thinking on this. I'm going to take you back, Tracy, to wait and answer your question. Imagine two crazy people came up with a steam to load a teddy bear and a container, and they, another Persian Gulf. Do you want to risk your life as a ship's crew? Like for somebody's teddy bear, you know, it's talking a little bit of a 20 foot container or are you getting all the ship and saying, yeah, I'm not risking my life for that, right? I was going to say, as a side note, though, to that alternate plan on the Gulf of Oman, I was reading that they're reporting missiles and drones in the Gulf of Oman as well. So in addition to the Straits apart, I was. I was, you know, by the way, listeners, it's helpful to pull up a map during some of these conversations because yes, you can see very clearly, Oman has the benefit by and large. I don't know exactly what their ports are on its coast, but yes, the straight of a hormones is less of an issue for them. Where is for the UAE? They're right in it. Yeah, unless the Houthis start up again, right? So the Houthis have been an interesting one. A morgue when I were just talking about this out of the, I had it coming on. The Houthis have put the thread out there that they're going to restart the tax in the Red Sea and off the coast of Yemen and potentially significantly deter traffic from heading to the Suez Canal, but they haven't started any attack, except the threads out there. Ready, you see container ships, container lines, diverting ships to the Cape of Good Hope to around southern tip of Africa to avoid heading into the Red Sea case that would these do start start up with the missiles and attacks and boarding ships again. But as of at least 15 minutes ago before we get started this podcast, it's out there as a threat, but that we these haven't done anything yet. The threat in and of itself already causes reactions though, right? Yeah, I remember. I think the big port in Oman is Solala, and I only know those because I visited their ones, but like it's pretty close to Yemen, right? Like I don't think there have been any direct attacks, but certainly relatively close. Just reminds me though, have you seen any early signs of people doing maybe insurance arbitrage where, you know, like certain flags or certain jurisdictions or entities are willing to run the Hormuz in a way that I guess Western companies just aren't at the moment or is it too soon for that and too uncertain? Yeah, I think too soon for that Tracy, Modhormuz, right? We did see on the Hormuz situation in Persian Gulf haven't seen that happening. There's some ships moving through, so it may be happening, maybe with some of the very few ships that are moving through, but maybe a good anecdote to kind of bring up here was when we were dealing with, you know, a year or plus or so ago when the Houthis were really ramping up their attacks, there was a lot of chatter about fact that Chinese had essentially the Chinese easy pass, told transponder to get past the Houthis. So we're seeing talk at that time of working with Chinese ship operators and Chinese ship owners that were more competitive because they could still send their ships through the Red Sea and into the Suez Canal, whereas more Western operated vessels that could be tied to countries that were unfriendly to the Houthis had a really target on them, right? So we're seeing some of that arbitrage a bit during the one that we've used for it full swing, so. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. The time is approximately 11.15 am about to start a central telephone call with Dr. Dawa Zhang. China's Ministry of State Security is one of the most mysterious and powerful spy agencies in the world, but in 2017, the FBI got inside. I've never seen that much evidence in my entire career and I don't think we'll ever see that much evidence again. I now have several terabytes of an MSS officer no doubt, no question of his life. And that's the unicorn. 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We've lived it very recently in a non-war situation in just what we saw during the aftermath of COVID when shipping just and I think we actually spoke then about this shipping just grew out of control and we saw all the subsequent delays and that was really just because of system overuse, congestion and ultimately, you know, a bit of failure because our system just wasn't big enough for as much as we were trying to ship during that period. That was when we had container ships and cargo ships stacked off the port of LA, we had clients with steel coming in where they said, you could be on anchor for four to six weeks waiting for your birth, what do you want to do? Then you start to have to look at the bottom line of your dollars and cents and that's what we're going to see again. Like anything, it just continues to back up, right? So we have cargo on vessels that aren't getting where they need to be. If it does, it's at a significantly increased cost. Going forward, if you want to book your freight, the baseline, the starting cost is going to be that much higher because of risk, because of increased sailing distances that you have to go and once you start using up your assets for longer periods of time, supply and demand, now capacity starts to shrink. So it really becomes quite the domino effect and the longer it goes, the more out of whack our system gets, the prices go up. And that's where we can talk about the short term is the price of commodities. And that's where our jumping off point is as we talk about oil and we're talking about aluminum and fertilizers and cement and all these raw materials or semi finished goods, but down the line, we all start to feel it as we did in post-COVID because that effect does start to trickle into our retail as well. This has the potential to be a disruption on the scale of COVID or like we're talking about that ballpark if this goes on long enough. I think that's the wild card. How long does it go on for? Yeah, there's going to be winners and losers, right? In addition to the losers, we'll always winters too, right? Going back to the Uthymus, no one was more excited than ship fuel suppliers down in southern Africa, right? With all the ships moving through the area that needed to refuel in South African ports rather than in ports in the Red Sea and so forth. So supply chains, ship and eventually start to set in. Is this going to your question, Joe? Or is this going to be at the scale of what we saw with COVID? Boy, I hope not. I mean, COVID hit every part of the world, every port in the world that had problems and so forth. So I think it would take quite a bit for it to get to that stage. But we're ready, as I mentioned earlier, with the price of diesel fuel in the U.S. jumping that's already going to start hitting transport of local goods going from distribution centers to the public, you know, local public super market here in Florida. So it's going, it's trickling down already. I can't believe it. It's a more than I racing for the fuel surge charges coming up. Yeah. This also reminds me, I think even before recent events, we were starting to see freight rates pick up a little bit in the U.S. and some people were talking about a potential turn in the cycle. I imagine higher oil prices will, you know, eat into some of the industry's profits. But before this week's events, did it feel like we were starting to see a little bit of a turn? Yeah, we just really were working on 2026 barge contracts or particularly the Northbound goods like steel, metals that are part of our typical business. Markle was on the front lines on that and we didn't see much in the way of significant increases, right? We're going to think for, yeah. No, no. Routine increases. There was nothing. Terrible. It's hard on the trucking. Yeah, it seems like a lot on the trucking, the freight. Yeah, truck freight has been. Yeah, where things are more volatile. Trucking is so reactive to the market. Much more liquid market rate with thousands of swap carriers and noir operators and so forth. And then, you know, rail freight is the exact opposite of the truck freight market from liquidity to monopolies. Well, it's not called the monopolies, actually. Right. But we know in trucks that you have a down period and then thousands and thousands of owner operators will come out of the market and go out of business and so supply swings down and up in trucking in a way that would be unimaginable and something like. Right. Exactly. from this reasons. Yeah. So, I know we've said multiple times now that the wild card is really the length and how long this goes on for. But are there any, I guess, proactive steps that you're taking in your own business to prepare for further disruption? Good question. Because where we fit into the supply chain is that our clients are the traders. So we're managing their supply chain. What protective actions or course correctors they have in mind really will relate to their trading book, which is going to probably be sourcing in alternate locations as needed if you can't get your commodity out of the Middle East or an affected region. When we dial into domestic logistics here, North American logistics, we will see everything continue to flow. And we don't expect as much a disruption of capacity. The disruption will be prices, but we'll still be moving things. And we will still see Trump rail barge and Ocean Freight will be more of the swing item here on what are the lanes where the freight is moving. Joe, did you ever hear about the story of the ships that were stuck in, I think the Suez Canal for years and years and years during the Six Day War? No. So the crews that were stuck on the ships started their own postal service. Oh, yeah. Built their own little society. It's a very interesting story. I certainly hope nothing like that happens this time around. 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