Skip to content
You can now search across every topic, entity and event.What's new
European Oil Markets
23JUL

Insurers hold the line on Hormuz risk

2 min read
19:27UTC

The International Group of P&I Clubs held its Hormuz war-risk exclusion in force through the entire shipping recovery, and now has a burning gas carrier off Limah to cite in keeping it.

EconomicAssessed
Key takeaway

One strike near Limah lets insurers keep the whole strait priced as a war zone.

The International Group of P&I (protection and indemnity) Clubs, a mutual association insuring roughly 90% of world merchant tonnage, kept its Hormuz war-risk exclusion in force through the whole recovery, even as London hull war-risk premiums fell to about 2% of a vessel's value 1. That figure is still around twenty times the pre-conflict baseline, so cover had cheapened without the strait ever being treated as safe.

Marine war cover in the Gulf runs through mutual pooling. The Group's clubs share losses above a retention, so no single club can quietly price one Gulf cargo back into Hormuz without the whole pool re-underwriting the strait. Owners had been carrying that risk themselves as traffic recovered ; now the clubs have a burning carrier off Limah to point to, and the decision to reopen or hold the exclusion falls on all of them at once rather than one underwriter at a time.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Insurance companies that cover cargo ships, called P&I clubs, had kept a special exclusion in place for the Strait of Hormuz, meaning they would not pay out for war-related damage there even as day-to-day shipping picked up again. These insurers work together as a group and share big losses, so one company acting alone has no power to start covering the risky route again; they all have to agree. Now that a gas tanker has actually been hit, the case for keeping the exclusion in place got much easier for the whole group to make.

Deep Analysis
Root Causes

The International Group of P&I Clubs operates through mutual pooling: member clubs share catastrophic losses above a set retention, so any one club's decision to reopen Hormuz cover effectively commits the whole pool to shared exposure, which requires group-wide, not individual, agreement.

That structure means a single incident, like the Al Rekayyat fire, can reset the exclusion for every member simultaneously, even for clubs with no vessels anywhere near the strike, because the pooling mechanism does not distinguish between a club's own claims history and the group's collective risk.

What could happen next?
  • Consequence

    Continued exclusion keeps commercial insurance out of reach for most Hormuz transits, pushing owners toward self-insurance or state-backed guarantees like the underused US Development Finance Corporation facility.

First Reported In

Update #148 · Iran shoots the Hormuz route it rejected

The National· 7 Jul 2026
Read original
Causes and effects
This Event
Insurers hold the line on Hormuz risk
Mutual pooling means one hit reprices the strait for every owner, not just the cargo that was struck.
Different Perspectives
US money managers (CFTC-tracked)
US money managers (CFTC-tracked)
US money managers had trimmed WTI net long positioning into July's rally, doubting the Hormuz premium would hold without freight or war-risk confirmation, and the crude stock build reported for the week to 17 July gives that scepticism a fundamentals basis. The 25 July CFTC data will show whether Brent's move above $100 changed their calculus.
Asian distillate buyers (Singapore)
Asian distillate buyers (Singapore)
Singapore's distillate holders kept retaining middle-distillate barrels as the East-West arbitrage window narrowed further this week, a pattern that sharpened as Fujairah light distillates hit a record low. Cargoes are being held rather than released west into the tightening Mediterranean market.
Bulgaria
Bulgaria
Bulgaria secured the removal of Lukoil founder Vagit Alekperov and Patriarch Kirill from the 21st package, with President Rumen Radev calling a personal listing 'shooting ourselves in the foot'. Sofia is protecting its position in Lukoil's EUR 3bn compensation claim over the 2023 Neftohim Burgas nationalisation.
Russia
Russia
Russia loses the roughly $14 a barrel of legal headroom the price-cap formula would have released toward $58, even as Urals continues trading below Moscow's $59 budget floor. The shadow-fleet insurance workaround that lets sanctioned crude clear above $44 in practice remains untouched by the freeze itself.
European Union
European Union
The EU adopted its 21st sanctions package on 23 July, freezing the $44 Russia oil cap for 12 months rather than letting the formula drift it toward $58, and listed shadow-fleet support vessels for the first time. The package cleared only after three failed Coreper votes.
Marine war-risk underwriters (Lloyd's-linked syndicates)
Marine war-risk underwriters (Lloyd's-linked syndicates)
War-risk syndicates lifted southern Red Sea hull premiums 150% to about 0.75% of hull value after the 20 July blockade declaration, still a seventh of the roughly 5% Hormuz band. Underwriters reset on realised loss, not declared threat, so the 23 July Encelia and Layla strikes set up the next re-mark.