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Hormuz Stranglehold Pushes Maersk’s Fuel Bill to $500m Monthly as Thousands of Seafarers Languish in Persian Gulf Limbo
Hormuz Stranglehold Pushes Maersk’s Fuel Bill to $500m Monthly as Thousands of Seafarers Languish in Persian Gulf Limbo
By Oghenewoke Osaweren | Waterwaysnews.ng Maritime Desk | Sunday, May 10, 2026
The relentless chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz is drawing blood from the world’s shipping industry with alarming velocity, as Danish container giant A.P. Møller-Maersk confirmed this week that the Iran-triggered maritime blockade has inflated its monthly fuel expenditure by nearly half a billion dollars — a burden the company is now offloading directly onto global shippers and cargo owners.
Speaking during Maersk’s first-quarter 2026 earnings presentation on Thursday, Chief Executive Officer Vincent Clerc laid bare the brutal arithmetic of the crisis. The Iran war has pushed the company’s fuel costs up by nearly $500 million a month, equivalent to roughly 3 billion Danish crowns, as bunker fuel prices surged from around $600 to just under $1,000 per metric ton. To cushion the blow on its own balance sheet, Maersk has implemented a temporary non-refundable Emergency Bunker Surcharge, effective globally from March 25, 2026, citing the current situation as having “significantly impacted access to fuel, its availability at key locations, with the right specifications and at a price point Maersk can absorb.”
In plain terms: global trade is footing the bill.
THE HORMUZ CRISIS: TWO MONTHS AND COUNTING
The Strait of Hormuz has been effectively closed since late February, with more than 800 ships and approximately 20,000 crew members stranded west of the narrow waterway. What began as a geopolitical flashpoint has hardened into one of the most disruptive maritime emergencies of the modern era, paralyzing a corridor through which approximately 20 per cent of global oil supply ordinarily passes.
Cargoes delayed in the region include crude oil, refined products and fertiliser, while thousands of seafarers remain aboard ships unable to move freely. According to US military estimates, more than 1,550 vessels carrying around 22,500 mariners are inside the Persian Gulf.
The human dimension of this crisis is one that rarely commands the same attention as the financial headlines. For those mariners — many of them Filipinos, Indians, Ukrainians, and Nigerians — the days have turned into weeks, and weeks into months, with no clear horizon for departure.
MAERSK’S FINANCIAL WOUNDS
Maersk’s Q1 2026 results offered little comfort to shareholders. Net profit for January to March plummeted to $100 million, approximately twelve times lower than the same period a year earlier, when earnings were supercharged by exceptionally strong sea freight demand. Revenue slipped 2.6 per cent to just under $13 billion, while earnings per share collapsed to $4, compared to $74 in Q1 2025.
Maersk’s CEO described the situation as “unprecedented, both in terms of size and the speed at which it has unfolded,” while noting that the full financial hit would emerge from the second quarter, when higher fuel costs flow fully through the company’s accounts.
The cost surge goes beyond rising crude prices. Maersk pointed to tightening bunker availability, regional price dislocations and the need to reposition fuel across its network, noting it had been “redistributing available fuel from North America and Europe” to keep vessels supplied across Asia and the Middle East.
Despite the bloodbath, Maersk maintained its full-year guidance. The company continues to guide for an underlying EBITDA of $4.5 billion to $7 billion and free cash flow of negative $3 billion or better, though it acknowledged experiencing higher working capital because of higher bunker costs, which is absorbing additional cash.
PEACE WON’T IMMEDIATELY FIX THE CRISIS
One of the starkest warnings from Maersk’s earnings call is that even a diplomatic resolution to the Iran conflict would not quickly unwind the maritime and energy damage already done. Even if a peace deal were reached tomorrow, Clerc said the impact on cargo flows would be limited in the near term. Fuel costs will not normalize the day the strait reopens, because the oil market will take time to rebalance and operators will remain cautious about routing vessels through the area until safety is genuinely established.
“The energy crisis does not go away the day peace comes,” Clerc stated, offering a sobering prognosis for an industry already battered by years of Red Sea disruption.
The CEO also raised a wider macroeconomic alarm, describing a scenario of high costs, weak demand and overcapacity as “a dangerous cocktail.”
RED SEA RETURN SHELVED INDEFINITELY
The Hormuz crisis has also dealt a fatal blow to Maersk’s carefully laid plans to gradually resume operations through the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. The Middle East situation is forcing Maersk to continue rerouting vessels around Africa, away from the Suez Canal, marking an abrupt stop to the company’s tentative efforts for a gradual return of some services to the Suez route — a key step towards ending years of global trade disruption caused by Houthi rebel attacks in the Red Sea.
Clerc confirmed that Maersk reversed and halted its anticipated gradual return to the Red Sea for safety reasons, noting that the one limiting factor was the limited availability of escort ships or monitoring assets from either the US Navy or any European naval force.
HAPAG-LLOYD ALSO BLEEDING
Maersk is not alone in counting the costs. German shipping group Hapag-Lloyd disclosed that the disruption around Hormuz is costing it approximately $60 million a week, driven largely by higher fuel and insurance bills. Insurance premiums for ships operating in the region have also surged sharply because of the threat of attack, adding to pressure on operators already facing rising fuel costs.
Industry analysts warn that even a swift resolution would not rapidly normalise markets. Refiners, shippers and commodity traders would remain cautious until genuine safety was established , according to risk analysts.
SELECTIVE PASSAGE: WHO GETS THROUGH
Iran has not applied the blockade universally. On March 26, the Iranian Foreign Minister announced that ships owned by five nations — China, Russia, India, Iraq and Pakistan — would be allowed to transit the Strait. Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines subsequently secured passage rights following diplomatic talks with Tehran. Western-flagged and Western-linked vessels have received no such exemptions.
A US-led military initiative to escort commercial ships through the strait was briefly activated, with one Maersk-owned vehicle carrier successfully guided through — but that initiative was paused within days.
IMPLICATIONS FOR AFRICA AND NIGERIA
For West Africa, and Nigeria in particular, the knock-on effects of the Hormuz crisis are already rippling through import costs, cargo delays and freight rates. Nigeria, which relies heavily on imported fuel products, refined goods, and manufactured cargo via container shipping, faces heightened exposure as the world’s major carriers impose multiple layers of emergency surcharges on every shipment.
Nigerian importers and exporters should brace for further rate escalations as the second quarter absorbs the full weight of Maersk’s surcharge regime — a financial storm that originated in a distant strait but is fast becoming a local economic headache.
Waterwaysnews.ng continues to monitor developments in the Strait of Hormuz and will provide updates on the implications for Nigeria’s maritime trade and port operations.
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Two More Tankers Struck in Strait of Hormuz as Attack Count Hits Five in a Week
By Okeoghene Onoriobe | Waterways News
Two more tankers have been hit while transiting the Strait of Hormuz, leaving two seafarers with minor injuries and pushing the number of reported attacks or security incidents against commercial vessels in the waterway to at least five since 16 September.
The UK Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) centre said an inbound tanker was struck by an unidentified projectile on Monday. Two crew members sustained minor injuries, but the vessel stayed under its own power and continued to its next port, with no environmental impact reported.
Hours later, UKMTO issued a second alert after an outbound LPG tanker reported being struck by debris from unknown projectiles. All crew were reported safe and the vessel also continued its voyage. Authorities are investigating both incidents, and UKMTO has not attributed either attack to a specific actor.
The two strikes build on a Joint Maritime Information Center (JMIC) advisory covering three earlier attacks between 16 and 18 September, one of which saw a tanker’s hull breached by a projectile, sparking a fire. JMIC continues to rate the threat level in the strait as “severe,” citing a high likelihood of deliberate hostile action and pointing to a pattern of harassment by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — drone overflights, surveillance of merchant vessels and VHF hailing, alongside the direct attacks.
Traffic through the chokepoint remains sharply depressed. Only 17 commodity vessels were visibly transiting over the weekend, down from 37 the week before and against a pre-war daily average of roughly 125. That figure excludes vessels sailing with their AIS transponders switched off, and JMIC notes a persistent gap between visible and actual traffic.
Nigeria Watch
For Nigerian maritime stakeholders, the Hormuz crisis is no longer a distant Gulf story. It is a cost line. Every fresh escalation feeds directly into the war-risk insurance premiums and freight rates that Nigerian importers, refiners and shipping agents ultimately absorb, since global tanker and container capacity pulled off the Hormuz route tightens supply elsewhere and pushes rates up across long-haul trades, including those serving West African ports.
The renewed attacks also sharpen the stakes around Nigeria’s push for a stronger voice at the IMO Council table and its broader blue-economy diplomacy under Minister Adegboyega Oyetola. A sustained Gulf disruption is exactly the kind of systemic shock that tests whether Nigeria’s seat translates into influence over how global shipping risk, insurance and rerouting decisions are made, rather than Nigeria simply absorbing the downstream cost.
Locally, the episode is a reminder of the layered nature of “maritime security” as a policy word: the Deep Blue Project and Gulf of Guinea security architecture address piracy and armed robbery close to home, but Nigeria’s ports and shippers remain exposed to security failures thousands of kilometres away in the Gulf.
Waterways News will continue tracking how the Hormuz situation feeds into freight cost pressure at Nigerian ports and NIMASA’s public messaging on the issue.
Blue Economy
Oyetola Confirms 7,059 Nigerian Seafarers Placed Onboard Vessels, Orders NIMASA to Fast-Track CVFF Disbursement
Oyetola Confirms 7,059 Nigerian Seafarers Placed Onboard Vessels, Orders NIMASA to Fast-Track CVFF Disbursement
By Ighoyota Onaibre | Waterways News
The Minister of Marine and Blue Economy, Dr Adegboyega Oyetola, says 7,059 Nigerian seafarers have so far been placed onboard vessels to acquire seatime experience, part of what he described as the Federal Government’s broader push to build a competitive indigenous maritime workforce.
The Minister, in a statement issued through his Special Adviser, Dr Bolaji Akinola, at the weekend, also directed the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) to work more closely with the 12 approved Primary Lending Institutions (PLIs) to accelerate disbursement of the Cabotage Vessel Financing Fund (CVFF) to qualified Nigerian shipowners.
According to the statement, NIMASA has so far received 92 applications under the CVFF framework, of which 20 have been forwarded to the PLIs and one has been reviewed and cleared for approval. Oyetola said the ship acquisition initiative could generate more than 30,000 direct and indirect jobs across shipyards, marine engineering firms and maritime logistics companies, while deepening Nigeria’s domestic ship-owning and shipbuilding base.
The Minister linked the disbursement push to President Bola Tinubu’s authorisation to unlock financing long owed to domestic maritime operators, framing it as central to realising the economic potential of Nigeria’s blue economy.
On manpower development, Oyetola disclosed that 222 seafarers had been trained free of charge in basic and advanced professional courses, while 333 cadets completed academic training and were awarded degrees. Under the Nigerian Seafarers Development Programme (NSDP), 135 cadets have completed the programme and obtained their Certificates of Competency (CoC).
He said the interventions reflect government’s commitment to strengthening indigenous maritime capacity so that Nigerians can benefit directly from opportunities created by the blue economy.
Nigeria Watch
The seafarer numbers are worth celebrating, but the more consequential line in Oyetola’s statement is the one about CVFF: 92 applications received, 20 forwarded to PLIs, and just one, only one is reviewed and cleared for approval. That ratio is the real story.
Waterways News has tracked the CVFF disbursement saga for years, and the pattern here is familiar: an announcement of “significant progress” that, on closer reading, describes a process still largely stuck at the application stage. Nigerian shipowners have waited over two decades for meaningful access to this fund, first established in 2003. A single approved application, even framed as forward momentum, does not yet amount to disbursement, and it is disbursement, not directives to NIMASA and the PLIs, that shipowners can take to the bank.
The seafarer placement and training figures are a genuine bright spot and speak to real capacity-building through NIMASA’s cadetship and NSDP schemes. But they sit somewhat apart from the CVFF question.
Training seafarers builds the workforce; it does not put Nigerian-owned vessels on the water for that workforce to crew. Until the CVFF pipeline moves from “20 applications forwarded” to actual funds reaching qualified shipowners, Nigeria’s ambition to grow an indigenous shipowning fleet — the same ambition the Minister invoked in citing 30,000 potential jobs — remains aspirational.
Waterways News will continue to press for concrete disbursement timelines and named beneficiaries under the CVFF, rather than accept process updates as a substitute for delivery.
Blue Economy
Navy, Fisheries Department Arrest 34 Suspects, Seize Three Vessels in Renewed War on Illegal Fishing
Navy, Fisheries Department Arrest 34 Suspects, Seize Three Vessels in Renewed War on Illegal Fishing
By Raymond Gold | Waterways News
The Federal Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture and the Nigerian Navy have struck a fresh blow against illegal fishing in Nigerian waters, seizing three vessels and arresting 34 suspects in a coordinated three-day sweep.
The operation, codenamed Operation Abo Eja 2026, was designed to tighten surveillance and enforcement against illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, one of the most persistent threats to Nigeria’s marine resources and the livelihoods that depend on them.
Among those arrested were 24 Nigerians, three Ghanaians and three Chinese nationals, underlining the increasingly foreign and cross-border character of the illegal trawling networks operating off the country’s coast.
The Western Naval Command led the offshore muscle of the operation, deploying a naval ship, a helicopter and Special Boat Service personnel, while the Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture supplied technical and regulatory backing to ensure the arrests translate into prosecutable enforcement action.
Deputy Director at the Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture, Adeleke Adegoke, said the operation underscored the need for sharper intelligence gathering and better information sharing between agencies to make future raids more targeted and effective.
Flag Officer Commanding the Western Naval Command, Rear Admiral Abdullahi Mustapha, described the exercise as proof of effective inter-agency coordination, adding that it would strengthen ongoing efforts to safeguard Nigeria’s marine resources.
Nigeria Watch
Operation Abo Eja 2026 lands squarely inside a theme this desk has tracked for months: the steady erosion of Nigerian control over its own coastal waters. Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing is not a fringe nuisance — it is a direct assault on artisanal fishing communities and the small-scale operators who make up the bulk of Nigeria’s blue economy workforce, even as foreign trawlers, often flagged or crewed out of Asia, continue to test the limits of enforcement.
The presence of Chinese nationals among those arrested will not surprise close observers of Nigeria’s fisheries sector, where foreign-linked trawling operations have long been accused of over-exploiting stocks with little regard for licensing or seasonal restrictions. It also reinforces a broader pattern this publication has flagged repeatedly: foreign dominance of Nigerian coastal waters remains an unresolved policy failure, one that recurs regardless of which agency is nominally in charge.
The joint Navy-fisheries model deployed here — naval assets providing muscle, the fisheries department providing regulatory teeth — is also the same architecture underpinning the Deep Blue Project and broader Gulf of Guinea security efforts championed by the Federal Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy under Minister Adegboyega Oyetola. Deputy Director Adegoke’s call for better intelligence sharing is a familiar refrain in Nigerian maritime enforcement: the hardware and manpower for these operations increasingly exist, but the surveillance and prosecutorial follow-through that would deter repeat offenders has historically lagged.
For the informal and small-scale operators this desk covers closely, the real test will not be the headline arrest numbers but what happens next — whether the 34 suspects face meaningful prosecution, whether the three seized vessels are forfeited rather than quietly released, and whether Operation Abo Eja 2026 becomes a sustained enforcement posture rather than another one-off show of force.
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