Despite the two week ceasefire there seems little real change in the Gulf region and Hormuz in particular. Iran seems angry that Israel continues to attack Lebanon, or at least targets terror cells active there. Difficult to see Iran’s leadership calling a truce in its proxy war against Israel, and America, because in some ways that eternal hatred it is the primary reason Iran exists in its modern form.
Meanwhile Trump seems to have laid a trap for Iran; insist on tolls, shoot missiles or use drones against tankers to enforce the toll booth and “you have broken the peace deal.” That gives Trump the justification to attack Iran’s remaining infrastructure, removing them from the oil and gas export business.
The end result could be rising profits for US oil interests, at least until the other players in the Gulf figure out a way to export oil and gas without suffering drone attacks. Yep, pipelines on land, or under the sea, can be ruptured quite easily. So the Saudi solution won’t work long term, without huge investment, and allies on land guarding pipelines – maintaining them too. Factor in the Houthis in the Red Sea and you have to rethink the middle east in terms of oil extraction and the costs of supply in general, long term. Huge expenses for Europe and many Asian-Pacific nations who reply on that energy supply.
Even if the peace deal holds two weeks what then? It takes days to prep a tanker for voyage and more days to reach safety from Hormuz.
Lloyd’s and others estimate that ship owners are still waiting in Hormuz for signs of real peace. Plus a lack of tolls by Iran, after all Hormuz isn’t the Suez canal, no country owns it. The player in the wings is China which needs global trade to function or its economic growth will go into reverse. No more big bridges, maglev trains, car exports etc. Maybe an alliance of Gulf states led by China can actually open Hormuz using military force and special terms trade deals with Iran – and others – thus trumping Trump at his own game? It’s a thought, meanwhile here’s the latest from Pole Star Global;
A new analysis by Pole Star Global reveals that transparent price discovery in Gulf oil shipping effectively broke down during the War phase following the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, with the majority of remaining fixtures no longer disclosing publicly quoted freight rates.
During the War phase – following Operation Epic Fury on 28 February and the IRGC’s physical closure of the strait on 5 March – 59% of the 64 recorded Hormuz oil fixtures carried undisclosed freight rates, up from consistent disclosure in all prior phases.
The analysis covers 30,943 clean fixtures from Pole Star Global’s Daily Broker Exchange dataset between December 2024 and 27 March 2026. Throughout all phases prior to 28 February 2026, Worldscale rate disclosure was consistent across Hormuz-loading fixtures
“The public can see oil prices and satellite images of ships at anchor. What they cannot see is what is happening at the contract level,” explains Matt Morgan, Chief Product Officer at Pole Star Global. “When the majority of fixtures carry no disclosed rate, no one has a reliable basis for judging when this market returns to normal. The forward curve is pricing a summer ceasefire, but the fixture data shows a market that has stopped reporting its own prices. Those two signals are contradictory.”
The volume collapse reinforces the picture. Hormuz-origin fixtures held a stable 20–24% share of global oil fixture activity from December 2024 through February 2026. By March 2026 that share had fallen to 5.4%, concentrated after 5 March when fixture activity from Hormuz ports effectively ceased for transparent price discovery. Global fixture counts for the same period remained at normal levels, confirming the disruption was Hormuz-specific rather than a broader market slowdown.
The Strait of Hormuz carries approximately 21 million barrels of crude and refined products per day, roughly one-fifth of global petroleum consumption. Unlike the Suez Canal, there is no viable bypass route for Gulf-origin crude, meaning any sustained closure forces buyers to source from alternative basins at higher delivered cost or draw down strategic reserves.
Fixture failure rates rose to 6.0% in the War phase from a 4.7% baseline, consistent with counterparty uncertainty and force majeure clauses being invoked on existing commitment
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