Lloyd's List Intelligence counted 84 Strait of Hormuz transits in the week of July 27 to August 2, up from 45 the week before, and still called traffic depressed. [1] Non-Iranian-linked transits rose from 28 to 52. Containerships and gas carriers resumed after a short pause. [1] Friday produced no new weekly table that reversed that judgment.
The paper's Thursday feature said Lloyd's still counted depressed traffic. Friday's owners did not treat Trump's soon or IRGC control captions as a booking note. Four industry sources told Reuters the proposed deal is not feasible. [2]
Sixty-five ships that entered during the memorandum's calm have not left. More than seventy have remained since the conflict began. [1] Westbound non-Iranian-linked transits nearly doubled, to 21 from 11. Lloyd's warned against reading the uptick as confidence. [1]
CENTCOM said Friday it had redirected 51 merchant ships, disabled two, and boarded two. [3] Since August 1, two ships on the Omani bypass have been struck. [1] Markets can hear a deal. The completed Friday table is still a modest bounce, a stranded second cohort, and an industry that will move only when the risk calculation actually changes.
Lloyd's has said participants will move quickly if a credible development appears. [1] Friday's adjectives are not that development. The 65 and the 70-plus are. Owners who escaped during the memorandum will not send a second cohort in on an adjective.
Shadow-fleet product tankers provided a slight lift. At least ten product tankers sailed through Hormuz in the brief's week, up from six, including four shadow-fleet tankers that shifted into compliant trades. [1] VLCCs still shuttle crude west of Hormuz and offload by ship-to-ship transfer in the Gulf of Oman. [1] Those workarounds are how the industry already fakes a strait. They are not confidence.
Tankers with a history of lifting Iranian crude were repositioning near Duqm and Karachi, Lloyd's said, ready to move if the blockade eases. [1] That is a parking lot, not a reopening. Mixed messaging from Washington and Tehran is still the reason owners will not send the next cohort. [1] Friday added more messaging. It did not add a weekly table that called confidence back.
Non-Iranian gas carrier and containership transits resumed after pauses of two weeks and one week. [1] At least one LNG carrier and one LPG carrier entered the Gulf in that week; three LNG carriers departed. [1] A modest resume is not a corridor. Lloyd's said the week ended on a violent note. [1] Friday's adjectives did not rewrite that note.
The MoU period cut mainstream tankers trapped in the region from more than 160 to 29. [1] Its collapse left the new 65 exposed. [1] That is the table owners still read. A deal headline does not empty it.
-- HENDRIK VAN DER BERG, Brussels