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naraburns  nihil supernum  11mo ago (text post)   1449 thread views

Transnational Thursday for December 21, 2023

After thirty weeks as @Soriek's passion project, Transnational Thursday is getting added to the auto-post bot. But it hasn't been added to the bot yet, I think, so I'm posting it this week, with apologies to anyone whose plans I've mussed!

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Yemen and the Red Sea

The Houthis have kept up their fight against Israel and managed to actually inconvenience everyone. Consistent attacks in the Red Sea have made merchant ships cautious about the shipping route, and have even encouraged vessels to take vastly longer routes all the way around the African coast. The costs for everything being shipped have, unfortunately, risen accordingly for consumers:

Keuhne+Nagel, a global logistics giant, said Wednesday that 103 container ships have diverted around Africa, a figure it expects to increase. Some oil tanker owners have also insisted on options in their charters to avoid the southern Red Sea, while BP Plc and Equinor ASA have also shied away from the area.

The combined market capitalization of the firms within the Solactive Global Shipping Index rose to almost $190 billion on Wednesday. On Dec. 12 it stood at $166.2 billion.

It isn’t entirely obvious that this is really going to boost profits for shipping companies however:

For shipping owners, the development both gives and takes away: Clients will be forced to pay up for higher rates, but shippers will also have to absorb higher fuel costs. Tanker and liquid petroleum gas shippers look best placed since capacity utilization is tight and trouble at another major canal—the one in Panama—has already given them a huge boost in bargaining power.

Brent oil prices rose around 1% on Tuesday, according to Refinitiv data. Shares of A.P. Moller-Maersk, a top global container shipper, were down over 3%. Shares of Dorian LPG, a major LPG shipper, were up nearly 2%.

The United States has of course taken this very seriously and vowed to protect any ships that need to move through the Suez canal, and have quickly assembled a multinational force to try to combat the situation:

On Monday, the Pentagon said it was establishing a security operation to protect seaborne traffic from ballistic missiles and drone attacks launched by the Houthi groups in Yemen. The effort, called Operation Prosperity Guardian, will include the U.K., Bahrain, France, Norway and other countries.

US warships have already been sent in, but so far it doesn’t seem to have arrested the trend of merchant vessels diverting their routes, so maybe it isn’t enough security for them. On the other hand, energy markets have not responded drastically, largely due to existing surpluses muting the urgency of the situation somewhat:

Oil and refined-product flows have more than halved from September levels, according to commodities-data firm Kpler. LNG traders and shipbrokers said Wednesday that more tankers carrying the supercooled fuel were diverting to avoid the Red Sea…

But thus far the response of energy markets to the disruption has been muted compared with dramatic moves in prices sparked by some other past outbreaks of violence in the Middle East.

Benchmark Brent crude futures edged up 1.3%, surpassing $80 a barrel for the first time since late November and extending gains over the past week to 8%. Natural-gas futures rose 1.9% in the U.S. to $2.54 per million British thermal units, and 3.8% in northwest Europe to 33.80 euros a megawatt-hour…

One reason for the muted response to the dramatic situation, say traders and analysts, is that crude and gas markets happen to be swimming in surplus supplies, dulling the effect of longer journey times. The U.S., Guyana and Brazil are all pumping record volumes of oil, the International Energy Agency said this month, while Iranian exports of crude have surged this year.

And although more than 8% of the world’s oil supplies have shuttled through the Red Sea on average so far this year, the stretch of water is less of a chokepoint than the Strait of Hormuz to the east. The attacks have clustered around Bab el-Mandeb, at the southern end of the Red Sea.

I heard France, Italy, and Spain are refusing US leadership for the mission/not taking part?

Yeah I saw that too. There are a bunch of complaints and issues people have been promulgating. Can't say how credible they are, I'm not a shipping guy:

For instance: https://twitter.com/johnkonrad/status/1737956292436615453#m

Or in a more comic format: https://twitter.com/revolutionaryem/status/1738393106024677882#m

I heard Russian and presumably Chinese ships remain untouched by the Houthis, they're all on the same side.

Time to take a page out of the Golden Age of Piracy playbook and start flying Russian and Chinese flags for that leg of the journey.

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