Gulf Insider
On Friday we reported that there was a moment of surprise among vessel trackers, when Iran unexpectedly blocked two container ships owned by China’s Cosco from transiting the Strait of Hormuz. Two days later, this misunderstanding appears to have been resolved, and on Monday Bloomberg reported that the same two container ships linked to China’s state-owned Cosco Shipping exited the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz, the first such vessels operated by a major Beijing-backed company to navigate the waterway since the Middle East war broke out. After aborting an initial transit attempt on Friday, COSCO’s ultra-large container vessels – CSCL Indian Ocean and CSCL Arctic Ocean – have successfully crossed the Strait of Hormuz after beginning their journey eastward from within the Persian Gulf on Monday morning, signalling a potential shift in conditions for commercial shipping. The ships started their almost 12-hour-long journeys from waters off Dubai. They took a route near Iran’s Larak and Qeshm islands at the narrow opening of the strait, before sailing into waters of the Gulf of Oman. The ships don’t appear to be carrying any cargo aside from empty container boxes, according to draft readings of how low they sit in the water. They […]
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