Hormuz disruption persists
- Industry leaders warned that maritime trade must remain under global rules as hundreds of ships remain stalled near the Strait of Hormuz. - The International Maritime Organization is coordinating ship evacuations, and Maersk offered line‑detention solutions and free‑time extensions for impacted ports. - The episode increases focus on contract terms, detention charges, and customer communication for logistics planners and commercial teams ( ).
Hundreds of commercial ships are still stalled near the Strait of Hormuz, and the United Nations shipping agency says it is working on an evacuation plan. (channelnewsasia.com) International Maritime Organization Secretary-General Arsenio Dominguez said this week that the agency is coordinating for ships stuck in the Persian Gulf after the conflict that began on Feb. 28. The International Maritime Organization said on April 2 that it had confirmed 21 attacks on commercial ships and that about 20,000 civilian seafarers remained aboard vessels in the Gulf. (channelnewsasia.com) (imo.org) Maersk said on April 22 that it would offer temporary line-detention solutions and free-time extensions in affected countries as port operations and navigation around Hormuz remain disrupted. The company said the measures were aimed at containers delayed by the crisis rather than normal customer storage decisions. (maersk.com) The Strait of Hormuz is a narrow shipping lane between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, and it carries about 20 million barrels a day of crude oil and oil products. The International Energy Agency says the passage is only 29 nautical miles wide at its narrowest point, with two-mile-wide channels for inbound and outbound traffic. (iea.org) The U.S. Energy Information Administration said flows through Hormuz in 2024 and early 2025 accounted for more than one-quarter of global seaborne oil trade and about one-fifth of global liquefied natural gas trade. That makes delays there a shipping problem for container lines and a fuel problem for importers far beyond the Gulf. (eia.gov) At Singapore Maritime Week, executives said the immediate fight over ship movements is also a fight over the rules that govern trade. Jeremy Nixon, chief executive of Ocean Network Express, said shipping cannot operate if every crisis turns into separate bilateral deals for safe passage. (channelnewsasia.com) Singapore Foreign Affairs Minister Vivian Balakrishnan made the same argument on April 7, saying Singapore would not negotiate its own safe-passage arrangement because that would weaken international law. He said freedom of navigation has to apply to all ships, not just vessels from states with bargaining power. (channelnewsasia.com) For cargo owners, the disruption has shifted attention to contract language that usually stays in the background: detention charges, free time, liability for delays, and notice requirements. Maersk said customers with cargo moving through impacted ports should contact local representatives, a sign that case-by-case handling is now part of the disruption itself. (maersk.com) The bottleneck is still open only in fragments, not at normal commercial scale, and shipping groups are treating that as an operational crisis rather than a brief scare. Until vessels can move under the same rules that applied before Feb. 28, the backlog at Hormuz will keep spilling into freight contracts, port schedules, and energy markets. (channelnewsasia.com) (imo.org)
