MW Many big oil tankers remain stuck in the Strait of Hormuz - and may not return once they escape
By Claudia Assis
It's doubtful that massive tankers, once the backbone of global crude flows, will be going back in quite the same numbers to the Middle East
An oil tanker moored at a refinery in the U.K. There less than 1,000 Very Large Oimassive oil
They are the 18-wheelers of the shipping world - large oil tankers that keep crude supplies flowing and, until the start of the the war with Iran, played a crucial role hauling Middle Eastern oil riches to the world.
There's doubt that the massive tankers will be returning in quite the same numbers to the Middle East even if the Strait of Hormuz eventually reopens and any deal to end the conflict is a lasting one. Oil futures (CL00) (BRN00) went back to trading close to $100 a barrel on Monday on fresher doubts about the talks.
There are 57 loaded Very Large Crude Carriers, the vessels most closely watched in the oil trade, still stranded around the Strait of Hormuz, said Matt Smith, an analyst with Kpler, an energy intelligence company. That number has dropped only a bit since the early days of the conflict.
"We're still in a situation where [passage through Hormuz] is only a trickle," even counting a few vessels transiting the waterway with their location signals turned off, Smith said. Some four vessels made the trip over the weekend, but carrying small volumes of fuels, not crude, and half were linked to Iran. "For all intents and purposes, the Strait of Hormuz is still essentially closed."
New skirmishes in the region are hampering cease-fire talks, and highlight that safety - and million-dollar insurance rates per ship - are the top calculations that ship owners will be making. For importers, charter rates also are expected to remain high, after jumping fivefold at the start of the conflict.
Some ship owners may be reluctant to let their vessels return to such a volatile region after finally retrieving them, experts say. Insurance companies will expect to be compensated as well for such overarching risk.
The stuck VLCCs are adding to the growing global anxiety about dwindling crude inventories. The large oil tankers efficiently and relatively cheaply haul about 2 million barrels of oil each, or more than 80 million gallons, double what the next-largest crude tankers, the Suezmaxes, can carry.
The fleet of these tankers is not large to begin with - only about 950 VLCCs are in service globally, according to Kpler.
Some of those larger ships have been redeployed to other, longer routes as import-dependent countries seek to diversify supplies from the Middle East. They may take a while to reconvene in the region.
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"I don't see a normalization of the tanker market anytime soon," and charter rates are likely to remain elevated, said Lee Klaskow, a senior transportation and logistics analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. "What this conflict has taught us, and what the Russia-Ukraine conflict has taught us, is that it doesn't take much to disrupt things."
VLCC charter rates shot up to $500,000 a day at the beginning of March, shortly after the start of the conflict. Those rates have come down to about $100,000 a day recently, Klaskow said. That compares, however, with May 2025 rates of between $35,000 and $40,000 a day.
Insurance rates also shot up as dozens of ships have reported attacks in or near the Persian Gulf.
Insurance rates for VLCCs were about $300,000 per voyage before the Iran war broke out, but peaked at around $4 million per voyage and are now around $1.5 million - and that can be higher for ships that may carry a larger risk premium because of their ownership or country links, he said.
Hormuz likely to remain closed through August
Rates for large oil tankers had been elevated in the years before the Iran conflict broke out.
The post-pandemic demand surge of goods, followed by Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the mass sanctioning of Russian vessels and trade routes, resulted in a smaller supply and contributed to higher rates, analysts at Veson Nautical said.
Then came the Iran war and the essential closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Some vessels went on to longer trips, to the U.S. and South America, for example, as importing countries sought to replace their Mideast energy imports. Many VLCCs will be out of position if the strait is ultimately reopened, said Andy Lipow, president of Houston-based Lipow Oil Associates.
Kpler is working on a base-case scenario where the Strait of Hormuz remains closed through July and August, with waterway transit not returning back to normal until the end of the year.
"You're going to have those tankers that are going to go for it; the first movers, we are calling them. Once you see a number of tankers moving through and getting through safely, that then provides confidence to the rest of the market," Kpler's Smith said.
The VLCCs will be an important part of a larger broken puzzle that will need to get put back together again, including oil production, inventory and refining.
It will be months before the VLCCs that are now moving oil being exported from the U.S. and other countries return to the Gulf. And even so, Hormuz traffic may not return to pre-conflict levels, he said.
Countries and companies are working through alternatives to Hormuz as the conflict grinds on. Saudi Arabia, for example, is rerouting some of its crude through a pipeline to a Red Sea port, and likely won't fully return to exporting most of its crude through the strait, Smith said.
Related: The Strait of Hormuz could matter a lot less in the future - here's how
Ramping up Middle East crude production alone is going to take three to four months, "just to return to any semblance of normal," Lipow said. To return to pre-conflict levels will take six months to year, or perhaps even longer, depending on what kind of damage occurred when wells were shut off, he said.
Some VLCC owners "would go through immediately for enough money," Lipow said. "Other owners with larger and newer fleets might take a little bit of a wait-and-see approach."
Asserting domination
Iran last month created the Persian Gulf Strait Authority as it tries to assert dominance over the waterway.
Tehran allowed vessels that followed its rules and obtained prior authorization to transit in mid-May, which led to an uptick in tankers making the crossing. That latest move, however, has been criticized as violating international maritime law.
Heightened hopes of a deal in April also boosted the numbers of daily crossings. And earlier in the conflict, Iran reportedly charged tolls for the safe passage of several ships or allowed the transit of ships belonging to friendly nations after direct negotiations.
The U.S. attempted to carve out its own Hormuz safe passage with a shipping lane hugging the Oman coast, but the so-called Operation Freedom barely got off the ground before President Donald Trump halted it, saying that he was giving more time for negotiations to work.
-Claudia Assis
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June 01, 2026 17:27 ET (21:27 GMT)
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