Hormuz insurance is still the receipt that the oil screen cannot print, and Monday's brief follows the paper's May 31 account of how a mine report kept insurers ahead of diplomats and how oil relief still ran ahead of passage rules.

ARC Energy's Hormuz analysis names the operating questions that matter after a price dip: tanker avoidance, naval escort ideas, reinsurance programs and volatile WTI, all of which decide whether a cargo moves, waits, reroutes or costs more to insure. [1]

This is why a market receipt has to be more specific than relief, because oil can trade on a ceasefire rumor or a softer diplomatic tone while a shipowner still has to know whether a transit lane is acceptable, whether a war-risk premium changed, whether an escort is available and whether a claim will be paid if the route proves unsafe. [1]

The public debate prefers moral clarity, with Hormuz treated either as extortion or empty fear, but the insurance file is duller and more honest because it asks who is willing to put money behind the sentence that the strait is safe enough.

Until that guidance appears, the market has only half a document: price movement without the passage receipt that would show cargo, cover and route confidence moving together.

-- HENDRIK VAN DER BERG, Brussels