Container Bytes #43: The Oman Deal Collapses and the Resilient Transpacific Peak

It seems like this was kind of imminent, but since then it's basically fallen apart.

Maybe not from the Oman-Iran side, but because of additional demands that Iran is making.

of the U.S. because basically this would be contingent on the U.S. removing their blockade.

Iran has reportedly released a list of demands of the U.S. to have the Strait open, which included a ban on U.S. and Israel linked vessels, transit fees for vessels from certain countries, as well as reparations from the U.S. for damage caused during US strikes during the course of this war.

And all that seems to have really pushed hopes back down that this trade is going to open soon.

We're really kind of back to the wartime status quo, which is very few transits, US blockade, periodic attacks on vessels.

And that's kind of back where we are, though there are statements kind of every day indicating that a deal is imminent, but so far those haven't materialized.

One interesting development alongside this is that we're seeing additional steps from carriers to increase transits through the Red Sea.

Now, we know that the Houthis have been threatening transits through the southern part of the Red Sea, the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, since the beginning of the war, but hadn't really attacked any vessels since then.

But just in the last few weeks, there has been an escalation.

And this is really because of an escalation related to the Iran war, but more directly between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis, which is a conflict that has extended for several years now.

The Houthis have attacked vessels linked to Saudi Arabia and said they will attack vessels that are making port calls in Saudi Arabia.

Even so, even though there's kind of an escalation there, We're seeing these additional steps, as we've said before, CMACGM has been transiting through when most other carriers had stayed away from the Red Sea and they're continuing to kind of restore or increase some of the sailings through the Red Sea.

Now we have Hapag-Lloyd and the Maersk.

reinstating some of those sailings and also Koskoun.

So we have several steps by several carriers back towards the Red Sea.

And this may be a beginning of a more general return.

Although again, we've seen these stop and starts before related to what's going on with the conflict in Iran.

So this is another kind of source of uncertainty, but maybe an encouraging step to see carriers willing to start going back, even though there's this conflict continues.