Iran and the US said on Friday that the Strait of Hormuz is now open for all trade ships after a cease-fire was reached in Lebanon.
As soon as the news came out, the price of oil dropped. However, Iran said that ships would have to follow a “coordinated route,” which shipping experts said meant a way that goes close to Iran’s coast.
While Iran was still making its statement, President Trump wrote on social media, “IRAN HAS JUST ANNOUNCED THAT THE STRAIT OF IRAN IS FULLY OPEN AND READY FOR FULL PASSAGE. THANK YOU!” Later, though, Mr. Trump said that the U.S. would keep blocking Iranian ships from leaving the strait, which started on Monday. As a reaction to the blockade, Iran said this week that it would attack ships in the Middle East.
Markets were hopeful that oil and gas would start moving out of the Persian Gulf in large amounts again after it was said that the waterway was now open.
The worldwide standard for oil, Brent crude, dropped more than 10% and is now trading below $90 a barrel. This is its lowest level in more than a month, but it is still more than 20% higher than it was before the war. Also, the U.S. standard, West Texas Intermediate, dropped more than 10% to less than $84 per barrel.
“If this turns out to be true, I think it’s great news,” said Jerry Kalogiratos, CEO of Capital Clean Energy Carriers, a shipping company that runs oil and gas ships.
Up until the war, about 20% of the world’s oil and LNG passed through the Strait of Hormuz. But tanker traffic slowed to a crawl when Iran started striking ships early in the war. This caused a lack of oil and gas on the world market, which made gasoline, diesel, and cooking gas more expensive.
While the cease-fire was still in effect, Seyed Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, wrote on X that the strait would stay open. Neither did he say if that was the cease-fire in Lebanon or the one between the US and Iran.
Iran has said in the past that ships can go through the strait. Experts on the Strait of Hormuz said that Mr. Araghchi’s comment should be taken with a grain of salt, in part because he said that the strait would be open to ships using a route that runs close to Iran’s coast and Larak Island, which was announced this month by the country’s maritime agency.
Martin Navias, who wrote “Tanker Wars: The Assault on Merchant Shipping During the Iran-Iraq Crisis,” said, “That does not equate to freedom of navigation.”
To stop Iranian and ships with ties to Iran, U.S. forces set up a roadblock east of the Strait of Hormuz on Monday.
On Friday, U.S. Central Command released a video of U.S. officials telling a commercial ship to go back to an Iranian port. Central Command said on social media that it was one of 19 ships that did what U.S. forces told them to do and went back to Iran. It said, “ZERO ships have gotten away from U.S. forces during the blockade.”
The guarantees that Iran gave might not have been enough for big shipping companies, because they don’t want to send ships through the strait, even ones that have been stuck there for weeks, without more solid security promises. The fifth-largest container shipping company, Hapag-Lloyd, called a crisis meeting to talk about what was going on, according to a spokesman for the business.
An expert at Kpler, a marine data tracking company, said, “On paper, this looks great.” However, Mr. Ellender added that he thought it would be weeks, not days, before there was a big increase in the number of ships going through.
But some smaller businesses might be ready to start up again if they can get cheap insurance. A New York Times study of Kpler data shows that over the course of the war, about 900 ships have become stuck in the Persian Gulf.
After the news, stock markets went up. They had already quickly recovered from a sell-off in March that was caused by the war. As the business day began in New York, the S&P 500 was up 0.5%. The measure had already made up for the losses caused by the war, and this week it set a new record high. It’s on track to have its best run of gains since October, with three weeks in a row.
An Istanbul-based ship owner with a stranded ship, who asked to remain anonymous because he wasn’t authorized to talk to the media, said that he might be able to get insurance to cover moving the ship out of the strait as soon as Friday, but he thought it would take a few days.
