Week 4 Recap of the Strait of Hormuz | Is the Aya-TOLL-ah Booth Open to Everyone?

Week 4 Recap and Maritime Center Update On this episode of What's Going On with Shipping, we recap Week 4 in the Strait of Hormuz. I'm host Salman Kogliano. Welcome to today's episode. So last week, we did a recap covering the first 3 weeks and catch it all right up here. A lot was happening those first 3 weeks and week 4 is no different. We've got a lot happening. We're going to recap all of it for you. Talk about what's happening right now and what we can expect to see in the upcoming week. If you're new to the channel, hey, take a moment, subscribe to the channel and hit the bell. So be alert about new videos as they come out. All right, first thing we're going to do is take a look at the Joint Maritime Information Center update. Now those were coming fast and furious. We're getting them every day, but now they've kind of slowed down a little bit. Now we're getting them about every two days. All I will say that the 28th has not come out yet, so we're using an older one. This one comes back from the 26th. So right here we are still showing level critical in the Arabian Sea, Strait of Hormuz, and Gulf of Omont. We've been that way for a while and I'm beginning to get worried that Jitmic thinks things may go bad while we're at critical. They've added a new category and that is poop. That's right, Code Brown. We may go code brown here on the regional risk level assessment. I'm just kidding. I added that. Don't, don't, don't think for a moment Jitmic went that far. That we've added code Brown. Code Red is pretty serious. It's very serious. It's serious, very serious, but we have not yet gone code round that may come, but in the near future. Anyway, as of 24 March, we had a grand total of 21 attacks since the 1st of March. On average, we usually have 138 ships going through. They just had one on 24 March. We're going to talk about 25 and 26 March here in the second and zero attacks over the past 48 hours. So here are the trends from 19 March to 25 March, straight of Hormuz eastbound that is exiting and then Strait of Hormuz westbound is incoming. Now you'll see Strait of Hormuz totals there in two different categories. 1 is on cargo ships, those are freighters and largely brake bulks. Single digit numbers never exceeding more than three on 22 March and over the past two days, at least for this report. 2425 March, just one ship and that was a westbound ship inbound on the 25th of March. You'll see we had four tankers outbound on 23 March. Did a whole video on President Trump's cabinet speech where he talked about 8 to 10 tankers. I have not seen those numbers. I broke that down for you. I'm not sure what he was talking about. We had one tanker outbound, excuse me, inbound on 24 March. And then we're going to talk separately here about 2627 March when we break down some data on marine traffic. Iran's New Tolls and Houthi Resurgence So let's take a look at the news stories over the past week from week 4I dipped in the G captain here and pulled out the relevant story. So March 22nd, Iran says Hormuz open to all but enemy linked ship. So basically the United States and Israel, sorry, you're not getting through the Strait of Hormuz and everyone else can as long as you're not supporting the US or Israel. And we're going to talk about exactly why that may be a bit of an issue here coming up. So March 23rd, Trump delays Iran energy strikes as confusion swirl over productive talks. So President Trump had announced that there was going to be a series of strikes starting on Monday targeting Iran's power structure, but then announced a hold off at least until April 5th because of negotiations that are ongoing with Iran. It's unclear who is negotiating and where this is taking place. The president alluded to it at his cabinet meeting. But again, it's not exactly clear that they're actually discussing what we do know. But Israel has struck steel plants in and around Iran. So obviously this is a very, very delicate matter. And striking at the energy of Iran is a big escalation in the conflict. We get this story on 24 March. Iran imposes a 2,000,000 toll on ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz. Can we call it an Ayatollah? I'm sorry, that is the most dad joke I have ever, ever said on this channel. You got to hear it. In my defense, somebody mentioned it to me, want to comment to one of the videos. And it was too good not to use it. So sorry you got the, you got the full wrath of Sal's dad joke. But the $2,000,000 has been coming out. This came out from Lloyd's list. They've been talking about this and we do believe that Iran is doing it Now. An interesting side note to the $2,000,000 toll here is the fact that some nations might find themselves in a bit of trouble if they pay that 2 million because some companies that do business with the United States and some other countries that have sanctions against Iran, if you pay Iran $2,000,000, well, you're doing business with a sanctioned government and that may lead to some difficulties. 24 March, The IRGC commander Iran turns back container ship in Hormuz as permission to transit policy emerges. Now, this was a small container ship that was trying to get through sailing from the United Arab Emirates toward Pakistan, and it was forced to reverse its course. Now, this showed that there is some sort of measurement or agreement that must be made to be able to go through the tollbooth. I'm just going to say that to Tollbooth. But as you'll see as we talk about it, in the past two days we had two larger examples of ships being turned around. And when I say large, I mean large being turned around. So March 25th Iran demands crew cargo details to send ships through Hormuz. So this is getting to be more than just simply sailing between Larek and Kushum Island and maybe dropping $2,000,000 off or using your EZ pass to speed through the toll. This seems to be they want to know who you're doing business and where that cargo is coming from or to. This is creating some issues that perhaps Iran is going to be targeting some ships that did business with some of the Gulf States and not allowing them to go through our next story, March 26th. Houthi though, man, they, they are, they're back. Just when you thought you got rid of the Houthis, they come back, man. You just can't get rid of these dudes in any way. Houthi signal Red Sea revival as Bob El Mandeb emerges as next flashpoint. So on March 26, we had the potential for the Houthis to come back. Now they haven't yet. We haven't seen any attacks. Although today, on March 28th, the Houthis did launch a ballistic missile against Israel, but not against shipping. They did not target shipping and this is really critical because of the build up of ships off Yambu. Yambu Anchorage, Red Sea Threats, and Insurance Delays Pop on over here to marine traffic. You may remember on our last episode, we did this. We cleaned up marine traffic, just showed you crude oil tankers, over 150,000 deadweight tons. You can see a lot of them still kind of hemmed up here in the Persian Gulf waiting to get out. Others are kind of congregating here in the northern Indian Ocean, Arabian Sea, just outside the Gulf of Oman. But now we have this large kind of chain of them coming through the Gulf of Aden, through the Bab al Mandab, Cheers. And into the Red Sea and right here off of Yambu, this massive anchorage that's developing here, boards are coming in now that we may be seeing as much as 5 million barrels per day coming out of Yambu with even potentially up to 7 million barrels per day. That's a huge amount. Now understand, you can't just turn that on fast. You have to gradually build up the pressure in that pipeline. Plus you need to make sure that you are emptying that pipeline. When you put that much pressure on a pipeline, that's a lot of oil flowing through it, and so you need to make sure that you have that oil being offloaded, that the sequence is there to move ships. Obviously, if the Houthi make their appearance and start striking at ships off the coast of western Saudi Arabia, that's going to be a problem. Because then if you are interdicting ships here in the Red Sea, then what you're talking about is maybe potentially having to sail ships all the way around Africa, through the Mediterranean, through the Suez Canal to go to Yambu. You can't load a fully loaded VLCC and go through the Suez Canal. So you would actually have a huge anchorage out here of VLCCS and be shuttling fuel from Yambu through the Suez Canal. That's expensive. This is a very dicey prospect. Should the Houthis come back into it. They have it, but it's definitely something to be watching. We also have this story from March 26th. Trump official says Hormuz ship insurance program to launch quote soon UN quote as tanker traffic struggles to recover. OK, again, why was this not in place beforehand? Why had we not work this out? I understand DFC is working to get 20 billion more than that. They've they've contracted with Chubb to do this. This needed to be done on day one. It needed to be done at least by the beginning of Week 2. Here we are week 4. I mean, this is late and not only that ships are already getting their insurance. They're getting their insurance. I, I mean, granted, we need this if we're going to start escorting and running ships through, but man, this is taking a long time to do it. And, and again, I, I hate this Monday night quarterback here. I really do. But if you're going to launch a conflict against Iran and it's going to go for weeks, you got to be thinking about how do we get traffic moving in another Strait of Hormuz? You just can't shut it for a month and think you're going to reopen it and everything's going to go back to normal without a problem and there's not going to be some economic dislocation here. I just don't know exactly what is going on. I know their plans, I know their plans. I work for the government. I know the the past plans that we had for opening the Strait of Hormuz. So there's a plan. It just it's not being done right now. It is down the list of things waiting to be done. Chinese Vessels Turned Back, India's LPG Movement Then we have this story. Chinese box ships abort first Hormuz exit attempt, undermining Iran's safe passage claims. So 2 ships, the CSCL Indian Ocean and the CSCL Arctic Ocean were both heading for the toll booth when they turned around, as I'll show you here in a minute, Those vessels are part of Costco, the Chinese overseas shipping company, not the big box store. The big box store has a tea and a Costco. This is Costco. This is significant. Everybody had thought that Iran and China had their ducks together. That does not be seem to be the case here. If you're turning around 2 ultra large container vessels, these are 18,000 box vessels and you're turning them around. That's significant. Now was it because of Iran or is it because of the insurance or the shipping companies? We don't know. We just know that they did turn around. We think of this story. US pushes weeks, not months. Iran timeline as Hormuz shipping crisis deepens. OK, well, I wasn't hoping it was going to be months. I'm telling you now, I wasn't hoping months. I, I, I kind of got to the kind of the the realization it was going to be a month. It was going to be a month. But months. Please tell me that was never in the conversation. Weeks is bad enough, months is horrible, but US is expecting to conclude operations within weeks, not months. And Washington can meet all its objectives without using ground troops. However, are you going to be able to open the Strait of Hormuz? That's really an important element here. I know everyone keeps screaming at me, Sal, we don't use the Strait of Hormuz. We barely get anything out of it. We do. I mean, I understand it's not a lot, but we do. I mean, we get significant oil out of it, 250 million barrels out of it. I know that's, that's, that's, you know, not even 3/4 of a million barrels per day. I got it. But it's significant. And more importantly, it impacts everything else. Bunker fuel, the fuel we use to fuel ships has more than doubled. Aviation fuel is through the roof. I, I mean, this is having knock on effects across the board, not to mention other products, liquefied natural gas, liquefied petroleum gas, helium, sulfur, urea, DAP map. I mean, I can go down the whole list of things and I did it when we did looked at this earlier in the previous video. It has knock on effects. The Strait of Hormuz needs to be open not just for the United States economy, but for everybody else's economy. Understand, we're doing our best in the United States to keep fuel prices low. I know you're sitting there saying Sal fuel prices aren't low. Gas has gone up almost a dollar, diesel almost over a dollar. Look everywhere else. Look at Australia right now. Australia is running out of fuel. It is run out of fuel in WA. I was in Perth and back in October and I can't imagine them sitting there with no fuel yet. They are Australia, Philippines, Pakistan, India, country after country, we're doing everything we can, shoveling fuel into our system to try to keep our fuel under control. And we are, believe it or not, or else our fuel would look like what it is over in Europe right now. But this is all going to hit globally in a big way and man, it is not going to look good. Let me get this story. Iran signals new permission to transit regime in Hormuz after blocking Costco vessels. So in an official statement, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said, quote, they blocked three container ships of different nationalities after vessels did not adhere to the new requirements. And one of the new requirements they're putting in there is not to do business with countries that are supporting offensive operations against Iran. These vessels have docked in the UAE and that region. So the problem is the US has a major base in the UAE and now these Costco vessels may be attached do that. That's obviously going to cause some problems across the board because China is not going to like the idea of two of their big ultra large container vessels bottled U in the Persian Gulf. Then we have this most recent story. This is out of New Delhi by Reuters. 2 liquefied petroleum gas carriers BW Elm and BW Tyre are crossing the Strait of Hormuz bound for India. US Israeli war against Iran has all but halted shipping through the Strait. But Iran said that this week that non hostile vessels may transit 2 India flag vessels have crossed the Gulf. India is gradually moving its stranded liquefied petroleum gas cargoes out of the Strait with four LPG tankers move so far. There are 20 Indian LPGS stranded in the Strait of Hormuz, Persian Gulf region right now. Detailed Look at Strait of Hormuz Ship Movements Let's go to marine traffic and take a look at the past two days. So this starts on 26th March at 00 UTC time. Here we see a batch of ships heading for that tollbooth. First one there is the NJ Jupiter bulk carrier, 21 years old, flagged in Barbados, 56,000 tons. Heading outbound here is the Zia. She's a bulk carrier, 13 years old, flagged in Malta, 81,000 tons. Then we have a bulk carrier. I'm glyph something. I'm not even going to try it. She's a 21 year old under the flag of Malta, 76,000 tons outbound. Then we have the Palau flagged Neba, 33 years old, 77,000 cubic meters of liquid gas. And then the final one of those 4 outbound ships is the Naraki, a 30 year old bulk carrier flagged in Saint Kitts and Nevis, 28,000 tons. And you'll see them all heading up through the tollbooth there, kind of swinging through and then heading out. Then you have two more vessels coming in here. You have the 34 year old Salute and LPG carrier flagged in Madagascar, 74,000 cubic meters. And then the Marshall Island flag bulk carrier, Lotus Rising, 25 years old. But you see, she got turned around and didn't make it out. She's 75,000 tons. And then a small little cargo carrier, Palau flag, the VLC one also making her way out. Then you see the two big ships, Here comes CSCL Indian Ocean and CSCL Arctic Ocean. And you see both of them head up toward Larrick. They stop and then they turn back around and head back to the anchorage off the UAE. Then you have the inbound Nicaraguan flag Tiara. She's a 24 year old crude tanker capable of carrying 113,000 dead weight tons. And then we saw the Sapphira try to head out, but she gets turned around. And then we have the inbound Genevieve, she's an 18 year old bulk carrier flagged in the Marshall Islands, 77,000 ton. And then we have the kind of four ships head out. Two of them are those LPG carriers for India, the BW Elm and the BW tyre. And then we see four other vessels coming out here, all in a group together. The 26 year old bulk carrier power flagged in Panama, 46,000 tons. You have the 16 year old crude oil tanker P Aliki, Marshall Island flag, 105,000 tons. The Pakistani flagged bulk carrier Multan, she is 24 years old, 50,000 tons. The 23 year old Barbados flag bulk carrier Ocean Pretty 51,000 tons. You'll see a 30 year old outbound Palau chemical tanker, 10,000 tons. The Andea and an inbound gas fate. She is Guinea flag, 27 years old, 17,000 cubic meters. So we're definitely seeing more movement here. The Bhavan coming out, that is an Iranian flagged vessel coming out. So I think what we're seeing is an uptick in the movement of ships coming through. I think there's no denying that particularly India doing extremely well getting their vessels out. Still haven't seen those eight to 10 tankers that the president was talking about the other day. But definitely seeing movement. I think the most significant has got to be the turn around of those two Costco container ships for Hong Kong, both of them Hong Kong flagged that is significant. If China can't move their own ships through, what is that saying going on? US Military Presence and Uncertain Future in Hormuz So here's the live view right now of the straight. Here you see an outbound vessel, Tawana, so crude oil tanker heading outbound. You'll notice she has Chinese owner and crew identified in her marker. We've got an inbound vessel at this time, Panama flag bulk carrier, the LB Energy. We do know that the United States has had the arrival of the Tripoli Amphibious Ready group into the area, and there's a lot of questions about what they may be doing with that amphibious ready group. And there's been a couple of ideas floated around. There's a couple of key islands out here in the region that potentially could be grabbed by them. I also think this southern shore of the Strait of Hormuz, now this is under Omani control and the question is will Oman allow the United States to land troops here? Because just like Iran can control the northern half, the southern half of the Strait could also be controlled. It is navigable pretty far South here. And if you put some land forces here with aerial and and surface a weaponry, you can provide a screen here by which to operate. That may be a place where you land your Marines on friendly territory to provide some coverage to counter the Iranians here. That would be a perfect mission for the Marine amphibious unit, or it can be the Marine Expeditionary Unit and the potential for follow on Marines through their littoral regiments, which are based out in Okinawa and Hawaii. Definitely a potential that we could see being done here. We don't know exactly how this is going to be executed. We know that the 82nd Airborne, their command elements and their First Alert brigade got sent out. But we've also seen strikes by Iran again. American aircraft on the ground. It was a big strike in Saudi Arabia recently. We do know that the Abraham Lincoln Battle Group is still out in the Arabian Sea. It did pull back to replenish and rearm, something they would do prior to coming back in. If they're going to support an operation in and around the Strait of Hormuz, the Ford Battle Group is going to be out for a while. They just moved from Suda Bay up to Split in Croatia. That means it's going to take some time for them to do their repairs. I actually saw a video of the kind of laundry room in the fire, and it was bad. It was pretty well gutted. I mean, that was a pretty bad fire. And if that was the same in the adjoining crew compartments, yeah, that's that's a serious, serious fire. Obviously they've had electrical systems isolated in those areas, but they're going to want to get in there, improve the habitability. I mean, basically, you can't operate with 600 of your crew not having a place to sleep, let alone do laundry on board. And laundry may not sound important, but it really is. You need to be able to have that. So we're waiting to see if the Bush deploys out of the East Coast, the United States. Some of the units have already set sail. We're waiting for Bush to sail. That would be at least at least a week for her to get across. That's a fast crossing for her and her escorts right now. Obviously, the issue here is what the US does next. We don't know. I mean, I just don't know. I watched the president's cabinet meeting. It was it was all over the place. I just don't know what is happening right now and it's hard to say. I hope you enjoyed this update. If you did, hey, take a moment, subscribe the channel and hit the bell. So be alert about new videos as they come out. Leave a comment, share it across social media and if you can support the page, how do you do that? Well, you can hit the Super thanks button down below or head on over to Patreon and become a monthly yearly subscriber. So the next episode Sal sign off.