Global shipping is slowing as surging fuel costs and mounting risks in the Persian Gulf begin to strain the industry’s finances, forcing companies to cut speeds, seek emergency credit and rethink whether voyages are still viable.
What began as a security disruption is now becoming a liquidity challenge.
“We’ve seen a lot of talk about the liquidity crisis,” said William Hogg, a senior analyst at Infospectrum, part of Lloyd’s List Intelligence, pointing to margin calls and sharply rising fuel costs.
Fuel shock hits operations
Marine fuel prices have risen by at least 80 percent since the start of the U.S.-Iran conflict and have more than doubled in major hubs. In Rotterdam, prices have climbed from about 429 dollars per tonne in early February to roughly 784 dollars, according to the Baltic Exchange.
The surge is already changing behavior. Several shipowners, including Maersk, have cut fleet speeds by about 20 percent to conserve fuel.
“They cannot price things correctly, they can’t guarantee availability of bunkers,” Hogg said on Thursday in Lloyd’s weekly shipping briefing. “If they get that wrong, every voyage … can make a loss.”
Credit becomes critical
The strain is increasingly financial.
Large shipping groups are securing expanded credit lines from fuel suppliers to keep vessels moving, while smaller operators face growing pressure, Lloyds List said.
A single Asia-Europe round trip can require more than 6,000 tonnes of fuel, pushing financing needs into the hundreds of millions of dollars for major fleets.
Gulf traffic collapses
At the same time, traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has dropped sharply.
Only 105 vessel transits have been recorded so far this month, compared with roughly 1,870 during the same period last year, according to Lloyds List. What remains is dominated by higher-risk operators, including shadow fleet tankers and vessels linked to Iran.
In recent days, up to 90 percent of transits have had some form of Iranian connection.
Selective routes, limited flows
A narrow corridor near Iran’s Larak Island in the north of the Strait of Hormuz is allowing some ships to pass after verification by Iranian authorities.
But the route is enabling only a trickle of approved traffic — largely Iran-linked vessels — while most commercial shipping remains sidelined.
Oil markets signal strain
The disruption is also showing up in oil prices, which rose again this week following Iran’s missile attack against a major gas field in Qatar.
The gap between Brent crude and U.S. West Texas Intermediate has widened to about 10 dollars per barrel, a sign that globally traded oil is becoming harder to move. Brent is rising as shipping risks push up the cost of transporting Middle Eastern crude, while U.S. oil remains relatively insulated.