Hormuz may be reopening — but shipping’s physical restart will take much longer

The US-Iran agreement to reopen Hormuz is thawing the market — but has not opened it. Japan’s Mitsui OSK Lines CEO Jotaro Tamura — the world’s largest tanker operator by vessel count, with more than 900 ships — said shipowners will wait until the agreement is “material” and visible inside the strait before resuming crossings, the Financial Times reports.

And already, analysts are slashing their forecasts for oil prices. Goldman Sachs cut its Brent crude forecast for 4Q to USD 80/bbl, down from USD 90, and trimmed its 2026 average outlook to USD 75/bbl from USD 80 — the bank’s second downward revision in a week. It also expects Gulf exports to normalize to pre-war levels by end-July, earlier than Goldman’s previous end-August forecast.

Adnoc CEO Sultan Al Jaber’s estimate for how quickly flows will recover was a lot more bearish. Al Jaber said earlier it could take at least four months after the war ends for global oil flows to recover to 80% of pre-conflict levels, while a full return to normal volumes through Hormuz may not come before 1Q or 2Q 2027.

The checklist before ships move: naval safety assessments, insurer guidance, and no further attacks. “Vessel scheduling adjustments and reductions in emergency surcharges would be early indicators of growing confidence,” Antonella Teodoro, senior transport consultant at MDS Transmodal, tells EnterpriseAM.

The International Maritime Organization is still assessing whether vessels can safely transit — clearing mines, managing congestion, and establishing an evacuation corridor for seafarers stuck inside the Gulf for more than 100 days.

What happens when ships return all at once? Capacity that has been absorbed into longer voyages during the disruption gets released back into the market suddenly — creating a real risk of vessel bunching, port congestion, and pressure on hinterland logistics before networks can rebalance, Teodoro tells us.

Mine-clearing could be the slowest part of the restart — and it cannot be rushed. Mine-scouring using conventional minesweepers and underwater drones could take weeks — approximately 40-50 days — keeping shipowners cautious even after a political agreement is formally in place, Reuters reports.

Middle East crude is pricing the reopening before shipping has. Dubai and Murban curves

have flipped into contango — meaning futures prices are higher than spot prices, a signal that traders believe supply will return — for the first time since the war began, Bloomberg reports.

SOUND SMART- Contango is when future prices are higher than spot prices — the opposite of the backwardation that typically signals tight near-term supply. A flip into contango means traders expect supply to ease.

Around 500 ships are waiting to exit the Gulf through a strait that has gone from around 135 daily crossings to a trickle. Some vessels have reportedly tried to slip out under cover of darkness with GPS switched off.

Recovery ≠ rewind

Carriers will not simply reverse into their pre-war routes. “The recovery phase presents a window for carriers to reassess networks, vessel deployment, and capacity allocation rather than simply reverting to previous configurations,” Teodoro tells us. Shorter routes might be especially prioritized at the beginning — cutting voyage times and lifting vessel productivity before longer-haul reconfiguration happens, she adds.

Premiums could start falling within days of a stable security environment, but don’t expect everything to normalize at once. Carrier surcharges will adjust over subsequent sailing cycles; costs tied to schedule recovery and equipment repositioning will take longer, Teodoro notes.

But it could get worse before it gets better: If too much capacity returns quickly, there could be a rate risk, she explains. Freight rates have already been elevated: The Platts VLCC benchmark stood at USD 278.7k per day by the end of May, more than double the USD 75.9k per day average since the index launched in March 2024.

What shipping agencies and port operators will need to do is coordinate a managed trickle back into the market, not a flood — whether by adjusting service frequencies, rationalizing port calls, or potentially keeping some of the network changes introduced during the disruption.

Tankers are likely to move first; container lines, last. Energy trades are concentrated around the region and benefit directly from shorter transits — so tankers have the clearest commercial incentive to return quickly. Container lines face a more complex calculation: any routing change ripples through global service networks and schedules reliability across multiple trades, Teodoro says.

The 90-day test is not whether individual ports have normalized — it is whether carriers are making long-term network decisions rather than short-term routing patches. "Some ports may have largely normalized, while others continue to experience knock-on effects from schedule recovery, equipment repositioning, and changing service patterns," Teodoro says. Longer-term commitments are the clearest sign of durable confidence.