First post here, been reading the thread for a while.
Traffic first, since the last Kpler number posted here was 16 July. Kpler’s count via Reuters had 8 crossings on Tuesday and 2 on Wednesday, against 130 to 140 a day before the war.
The toll argument running through this thread already has an answer written into the policy wording, and it landed on 23 July without much noise. The Lloyd’s Market Association published a model clause for marine hull underwriters called the Strait of Hormuz Transit Fee Condition. Under it, insurers will not cover a transit fee, toll or other payment made to get a vessel through the strait, and where such a payment has been made, cover for that vessel ceases. Non-financial payments count too. The LMA developed it over sanctions and terrorism legislation in the US, UK or EU rather than over price. It is a model clause, so it bites where underwriters write it into the cover.
The fee itself finally has figures. Reuters reported today that Iran is seeking 5 to 7 percent of the price of cargoes from ships using the strait, Oman is discussing around 3 percent, and Washington wants no fees at all. Whoever ends up issuing that invoice, the owner who pays it can lose the cover for that voyage.
The premium is the price already being paid. Marcus Baker at Marsh told S&P Global Platts on 22 July that additional war-risk premiums had jumped to 7.5 to 10 percent of hull value, up from 1 to 3 percent a few weeks earlier and roughly a quarter of a percent before the war.
On the exchange upthread about who actually stops a ship: the LMA said on 23 March that reports of cover being cancelled or unaffordable were not accurate, and 88 percent of the Lloyd’s marine war market participants who responded to its survey still had appetite to underwrite international linked hull war risks. It put the reason ships were not moving on masters and owners assessing the risk to crew and vessel as too high.
Washington’s own fix stayed on the shelf. The DFC maritime reinsurance facility, up to $40 billion with Chubb leading, covers only vessels transiting under US naval escort, and on the last public account I can find, dated 17 May, it had written zero business. CENTCOM’s word for what it has done for more than 1,000 vessels over the past three months is “assisted”.
Underwriters will write it. Masters still have to sail it.
