Trickle of box ships brave mines to pick their way through Hormuz
A few days into peace talks being held in Switzerland between the US and Iran, ...
Evacuation operations in the Strait of Hormuz have been paused after an attack on a containership in the besieged waterway yesterday led the IMO to demand safety guarantees remain in place for vessels on the evacuation list.
Confirming Evergreen’s 9,500 teu Ever Lovely had been hit by a projectile, the IMO challenged claims from US officials that the attack took place while the vessel was transiting under UN authorisation.
Arsenio Dominguez, secretary-general of the UN agency, said: “This vessel did not transit under IMO’s evacuation framework. I have always reiterated the safety of the seafarers remains paramount.”
Evergreen said the ship was 3.6 nautical miles south-east of Oman, on a route recommended by the UK Maritime Trade Operations when it was struck by an unidentified object, starboard of the bridge superstructure.
US media blamed the Iranians for the strike, but, at the time of writing, the Iran authorities had neither confirmed nor denied their part in it.
Nonetheless, its navy had earlier yesterday warned that vessels evacuating the strait were required to use only routes designated by Iran, and those using other routes would become targets.
Vespucci Maritime CEO Lars Jensen noted that while Iran had not provided clarification on which corridors it meant, a corridor through Oman waters had been developed in conjunction with the IMO.
Despite the attack, the Ever Lovely remains seaworthy and, together with the Ever Lotus and Ever Unicorn – which transited Hormuz unharmed – is continuing its scheduled route to Singapore’s Port Klang, leaving no Evergreen vessels in the strait.
Other vessels have also managed to leave the waterway since the ceasefire MOU between Iran and the US was announced, including Maersk’s 4,500 teu Maersk Baltimore.
The IMO had planned to praise the operation with a media call yesterday, but the cancellation of the call meant something had happened with many fearing the worst, but Mr Dominguez has sought to allay concerns by noting that he expected the pause of the evacuation programme to be temporary.
He said the decision had been taken “to reconfirm the necessary safety guarantees continue to be in place for the ships on our evacuation list and all those in the region”, but it is unknown how eager box ship operators will be to risk the route.
Pointing to the numbers that had taken advantage of the programme, Mr Jensen said it appeared that carriers were being more cautious, with chief analyst at Xeneta Peter Sand suggested they were more concerned with trapped seafarers.
He said: “There’s been significant attention on the prospect of the strait reopening, but the data tells a more nuanced story. Over the past seven days, the number of daily transits (of all ship types) has ranged from 22 to 60.
” Wednesday saw seven transits recorded. Only one was inbound to the Arabian Gulf, meaning the industry is still on a mission to bring trapped seafarers out of the region, rather than re-establishing networks.”
Mr Sand added that “reconnecting container services requires a fundamentally different risk assessment than one-off transits by other vessel types”.
“Carriers need a safe, permanent corridor before they will commit networks and we are not there yet.”
Sources approached by The Loadstar were playing their cards close to their chest, “monitoring the situation closely”, although there has been scepticism that a full strait reopening was in the near future.
Asked what hopes they had for a return to normalcy following news of the ceasefire, one forwarder pointed Israel bombing Beirut and said, “how fucking long did that last?”
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