Hormuz blockade halts Gulf oil
A blockade of the Strait of Hormuz has entered its fourth week and effectively stopped oil and gas shipments out of the Persian Gulf — the last tankers that left before the standoff are now docking, and the market is braced for the supply shock. Shippers are scrambling to reroute via the Suez Canal or around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope, pushing transit times and costs sharply higher, while the Bab el‑Mandeb has emerged as a new bottleneck for about 9 million barrels per day of trade; Saudi Arabia is boosting Red Sea exports from Yanbu toward a ~5 million bpd target to offset Gulf shortfalls. (cbc.ca) (alhurra.com) (jagranjosh.com) (arabnews.pk)
About 90 ships — including oil tankers — have transited the Strait since the conflict began, even as ship‑tracking shows hundreds of vessels waiting outside the waterway. (apnews.com) Independent trackers and an industry dashboard report roughly 200 vessels stranded and an “extreme” war‑risk insurance premium that has pushed many tankers to hold in the Gulf of Oman rather than risk transit. (hormuzstraitmonitor.com) The U.S. has publicly warned that Iran‑aligned Houthi forces could begin firing on ships in the Bab el‑Mandeb, elevating the Red Sea chokepoint from a congestion point to an active security risk. (bloomberg.com) Rerouting around Africa would add roughly 3,000–4,000 nautical miles to voyages from the Gulf to Europe or the U.S., a distance that analysts say will materially increase transit times and freight costs. (isdo.ch) Ship‑tracking compiled by Bloomberg and other outlets shows crude loadings from Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea terminals climbed to about 4.4 million barrels per day in the five days to March 24 as Riyadh diverted flows through its East‑West pipeline. (arabnews.com) Global benchmarks have re‑priced the disruption: Brent traded near $107 on March 26 and was about $106.97 on March 27, while Goldman Sachs has reclassified the situation as the largest‑ever supply shock and models cumulative lost flows of roughly 800 million barrels under a protracted closure. (markets.financialcontent.com) India has moved to secure around 60 days of crude supply to blunt immediate fuel shortages as trading and national stockpile moves accelerate in Asia. (msn.com)
