Monday ship traffic through Strait of Hormuz highest since start of war: monitor

PARIS: At least 36 commodity carriers transited the Strait of Hormuz on Monday, a record level since the start of the Middle East war in late February, according to data from the maritime tracking firm Kpler.

The 36 passages represent nearly a third of normal peacetime traffic (around 120 a day) through the strait, which normally sees around a fifth of the world’s oil and gas exports.

The total count for Monday crossings is expected to rise further as ships are detected later by maritime trackers.

Commodities traffic through the strait — which includes tankers carrying oil, liquefied natural gas and dry bulk such as fertilisers — has increased slightly after Washington and Tehran reached last week a memorandum of understanding to end the war.

Before the June 14 agreement, less than 10 commodity vessels went through the strait per day since the passage was closed by Iran on March 1 in retaliation against the US and Israeli strikes.

Since June 15, the average has risen to 21, and even reached 27 over the last five days.

“The Strait of Hormuz will never return to its pre-war conditions and will be administered by the Islamic Republic of Iran, in accordance with international law,” Iran’s chief negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said during negotiations in Switzerland, state media reported Tuesday.

Whether Iran will administer the vital passage remains one of the key questions in the talks set for the next two months.

Iran announced Saturday that it had closed the Strait of Hormuz again in response to Irsael’s attacks on Lebanon.

On Monday, the United States said it was temporarily lifting sanctions on Iran to let it produce, sell and deliver crude oil and related products through August 21.