‘Weeks, if not months’: Strait of Hormuz tanker traffic won’t normalize anytime soon

The U.S. and Iran’s “fragile truce” has lifted hopes that a full reopening of the Hormuz Strait can end the energy supply crunch that threatens to cripple the global economy.

But shipping and maritime experts say traffic through the critical energy artery will not normalize anytime soon.

President Donald Trump said Tuesday the ceasefire is contingent on the “complete, immediate, and safe opening” of the Strait, which typically carries around one-fifth of the world’s oil and gas supplies.

Vice President JD Vance reiterated on Wednesday that the Iranian leadership has agreed to open the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran, however, has made it clear that the reopening would be conditional, subject to coordination with the country’s armed forces and technical limitations.

The fragile truce has done little to restore confidence for tankers to traverse through the strait, particularly as signs of the ceasefire collapsing loom with Israel escalating the deadliest attacks on Lebanon.

Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has yet to see a meaningful rebound, with just four transits recorded on Wednesday, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.

“Vessels appear to still be making use of the altered transit route west along Larak Island,” it said.

More than 400 oil-laden tankers and dozens of LNG or LPG carriers remain anchored outside the Gulf, awaiting signals for passage, according to MarineTraffic, a ship-tracking platform using radio-based AIS, or automatic identification system.

The actual transit volumes may be higher than the data suggests, as many tankers turn off their transponders to avoid potential targeting by Iran, but remain at a fraction of pre-war levels.

Transit conditions, toll arrangements, and the legal framework for passage remain undefined, deterring ship owners from passing through the waterway, according to maritime research firm Windward.

“Whether Iran will maintain control of Hormuz during talks is unclear but all signs point to the Islamic Republic refusing to give up its leverage during the two-week period,” Windward said in a note on Wednesday.

The first 48 hours of the ceasefire will be crucial to shipowners’ willingness to enter the Strait, Windward added.

“Returning to normal for our industry is weeks away,” Nils Haupt of Hapag-Lloyd, one of the world’s largest shipping firms, told CNBC over the phone. The company is “currently refraining” from transiting the Strait, based on its latest risk assessment.

“The issue is not solved…[until] all the ships have left the Strait of Hormuz, because there are hundreds of thousands of containers at ports in India, Oman, and Pakistan, which need to be transported into the Persian Gulf.

“It will take weeks, if not months, to reintroduce the original shipping schedules that we had before the start of the war.”

Maersk said in a statement that, while the ceasefire may create transit opportunities, it does not yet provide full maritime certainty and “needs to understand all potential conditions attached.”

Analysts told CNBC that the Houthis in Yemen disrupting the Red Sea last year provides a reference point to how quickly traffic could recover following a potential ceasefire.

“In the Red Sea with the Houthis, the ceasefire agreement was last January and traffic has not returned,” Nikos Petrakakos, managing director at maritime investment manager Tufton told CNBC in an interview. “As long as there’s a threat of an attack, that’s enough. You don’t actually need the attack.”

One distinction between the Red Sea and Strait of Hormuz scenarios is the availability of alternative routes, Panagiotis Krontiras, tanker freight analyst at Kpler, said.

“In the former, seaborne flows can be rerouted via the Cape of Good Hope, whereas in the latter, rerouting options are far more limited and largely confined to pipeline diversions,” he added. “As such, market dynamics are likely to encourage a speedier recovery of the Strait of Hormuz traffic.”

Both U.S. WTI and Brent crude oil prices have retreated to around $97 per barrel, down from near $110 a barrel before the ceasefire was announced on Tuesday, but remain substantially above their pre-war level of around $70.

Analysts expect oil to continue trading at a premium to its pre-war price for some time, as supply disruption persists.

“Physical and logistical disruptions are not going to disappear overnight,” said Ray Sharma-Ong, deputy global head of multi-asset bespoke solutions at Aberdeen Investments, adding that shipowners also face higher shipping costs, war risk insurance and precautionary stockpiling globally.

“It’s not purely a financial consideration,” added Petrakakos, with ships’ captains left with the responsibility for deciding whether to take the risk of transiting the Strait.

“For now, most of them [captains] are rightfully thinking, ‘I don’t care how much the bonus is, it’s not worth risking my life’. Over time, that might change.”