Getting Oil Tankers To Return to the Strait of Hormuz

As everyone knows, ship traffic through Strait of Hormuz has completely ceased as a result of the unprovoked war against Iran, resulting in 20% of the worlds oil supply suddenly being removed from the market.

While this is great news for the environment, it’s also bad news for the world economy, so leaders have been working overtime trying to figure out how to coax ships into traversing the Strait despite the threat of floating mines, rocket fire and drones.

It was announced that Donald Trump approved a plan for the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) to provide a $20 billion reinsurance fund in order to coax insurers back into the market, a move that drew the required, customary praise for Trump from DFC CEO Ben Black, who expressed his personal gratitude in the DFC press release.

Because there is now a Federal backstop for insurance losses, Chubb has now stepped up to offer insurance in order to entice shipowners into sending their oil tankers through the Straight, never mind the ancillary risks:

For one, the shipping lanes into and out of the the Persian Gulf are very shallow – if there were a “successful” attack on an oil tanker that sunk a ship, the wreckage could very well stymie any further traffic through that lane until remediated.

Secondly – an issue that I’ve seen absolutely NO MENTION of at all – what of the human risk? Insurers are covering the value of the tanker and cargo, and perhaps will perhaps pay out lost earnings to a spouse should a crew member be killed – but apparently lives themselves are not a factor so long as they can find destitute people from the third world to actually crew the man the ship while those risks exist.