Editor's Choice
Saudi Arabia Launches New Shipping Corridors as Hormuz Remains Closed to Commercial Traffic
Saudi Arabia Launches New Shipping Corridors as Hormuz Remains Closed to Commercial Traffic
Riyadh activates Red Sea alternatives and pipeline bypasses as the world’s worst maritime supply crisis since WWII enters its third month — with Nigeria’s tanker revenues, crude export premiums, and port traffic in the balance
By Okeoghene Onoriobe | Waterways News Correspondent
Since 28 February 2026, the Strait of Hormuz has been effectively closed to most commercial shipping — triggering what maritime analysts and global energy bodies are describing as the most severe disruption to seaborne trade since the Second World War. Through that narrow artery linking oil and gas producers in the Gulf to the open seas, some 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas normally flows during peacetime. Today, that flow has been reduced to a trickle, and the tremors are being felt from Rotterdam to Lagos.
Iran imposed a selective blockade on 28 February 2026, and the United States subsequently imposed a parallel naval blockade of Iranian ports on 13 April, creating a structural “dual blockade.”
About 2,000 ships remain stranded in the Gulf, waiting to be allowed through. Even as the United States launched “Project Freedom” — a major naval escort operation in early May — the Strait remains far from safe for routine commercial navigation. As of this week, commercial vessel movement through the Strait remains heavily restricted and inconsistent, with a significant number of vessels still waiting outside the Gulf or operating under controlled routing arrangements.
The scale of the economic shock is staggering. With Hormuz tanker traffic still restricted, cumulative supply losses from Gulf producers already exceed one billion barrels, with more than 14 million barrels per day of oil now shut in — an unprecedented supply shock. Oil prices surged sharply after the outbreak of conflict, with Brent recording its highest monthly rise ever by the end of March.
RIYADH’S RESPONSE: TWO NEW SERVICES, ONE CLEAR MESSAGE
Against this volatile backdrop, Saudi Arabia’s port authority, Mawani, has moved decisively to protect its own trade lifelines and demonstrate to the world that Gulf commerce will not be held hostage indefinitely to the fate of a single chokepoint.
Mawani has inaugurated a new shipping service connecting the ports of Jeddah, Salalah, and Djibouti, with a capacity of 1,730 standard containers, to boost connectivity with global ports. Additionally, the Saudi Port Authority has launched a Red Sea Express linking Jeddah, Yanbu, Egypt’s Sukhna, and the Jordanian port of Aqaba, with a capacity of 1,100 containers.
In total, Saudi Arabia’s port authority has now added five new maritime shipping services following Iran’s near-closure of the Strait of Hormuz, in a move designed to strengthen connectivity via the Red Sea and provide supply chain continuity and flow of goods.
Beyond container services, Riyadh has also leaned heavily on pipeline infrastructure. When the conflict peaked in March, Saudi Arabia reportedly used the East–West Pipeline to bypass the Iranian blockade on Hormuz, moving up to five million barrels per day. Another pipeline was also activated, as Riyadh and Abu Dhabi diverted massive volumes of oil from the Hormuz route through Red Sea ports at Yanbu and Al-Muajjiz.
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have successfully redirected some exports to terminals loading outside of the Strait, even as mounting supply losses from Hormuz continue to deplete global oil inventories at a record pace.
The new services and pipeline diversions are also part of a broader Saudi diplomatic posture. Riyadh has been pressing the United States to end its blockade of Hormuz and Iranian ports, fearing further strikes by Iran and the potential closure of the Bab-al-Mandab Strait by Iran or its allies like Yemen’s Ansarallah — a development that would effectively shut down the Red Sea corridor that Saudi Arabia is now betting heavily upon.
NIGERIA WATCH: OPPORTUNITY AND EXPOSURE IN EQUAL MEASURE
For Nigeria’s maritime and energy sector, the Hormuz crisis is playing out in contradictory directions simultaneously — creating short-term windfalls while exposing structural vulnerabilities that industry stakeholders and the Federal Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy cannot afford to ignore.
The Revenue Upside
Nigeria sits outside the Hormuz corridor entirely, loading its crude from Atlantic Basin terminals at Bonny, Forcados, Brass, and Escravos. In a market suddenly starved of Gulf supply, this geography has become a premium asset. Producers outside of the Middle East have pushed output higher and lifted exports to record levels in response to the crisis, (IEA) and Nigeria’s OPEC output, still recovering from years of production shortfalls, is now commanding elevated differentials as European and Asian refiners scramble for Atlantic crude alternatives.
The Dangote Petroleum Refinery — which was already reconfiguring Nigeria’s crude trading relationships before the Hormuz crisis — is now operating in an environment where domestic crude retention and refined product exports carry significantly higher value. With Gulf refinery throughputs severely curtailed, Nigerian refined products have found expanded export windows, and the refinery’s forward commercial strategy deserves close scrutiny in light of these geopolitical shifts.
Tanker earnings on West African routes have also surged. Nigerian crude is predominantly carried on Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCCs) and Suezmax vessels. With Gulf loadings choked off and global ton-mile distances extended by Cape of Good Hope rerouting, freight rates have spiked — a boon for shipowners calling at Nigerian terminals, and a factor that NPA and terminal operators at Apapa and the Lekki Deep Sea Port should be monitoring closely in terms of berth demand and port revenue projections.
The Exposure
The same crisis that boosts Nigeria’s crude premium also raises the cost of everything the country imports by sea. Nigeria remains heavily dependent on imported fuel, machinery, fertiliser, and manufactured goods — commodities that now travel longer, more expensive routes under inflated war-risk insurance premiums.
Port users, freight forwarders, and clearing agents operating at Apapa, Tin Can Island, and Lekki are already absorbing these elevated costs in their logistics chains.
Container freight rates on Asia-to-Europe lanes are rising again, and the Strait of Hormuz closure, combined with resumed Houthi attacks, has eliminated any near-term prospect of a return to Suez Canal routing.
Nigerian importers sourcing goods from Asia — electronics, textiles, vehicles, and machinery — are facing extended transit times and higher freight invoices. The Nigeria Customs Service, which has been posting record port revenue figures in recent months, may find collection growth under pressure if import volumes contract in response to elevated landed costs.
Port congestion is also building at accessible alternative hubs such as Jeddah and Salalah — the very ports now being connected by Mawani’s new services.
For Nigerian importers and exporters routing through the Middle East, these congestion-driven delays add another layer of uncertainty to already stretched supply chains.
The Cabotage and NIMASA Dimension
The crisis also carries implications for Nigeria’s domestic maritime policy architecture. NIMASA’s Cabotage Vessel Financing Fund (CVFF), long a subject of debate over disbursement timelines, was designed partly to build a Nigerian-flagged fleet capable of participating in regional and international trade. In a moment when freight rates are elevated and demand for alternative routing through the Atlantic is at a historic high, the absence of a substantial Nigerian-flagged deep-sea presence means that the windfall accruing from higher tanker rates flows overwhelmingly to foreign shipowners rather than Nigerian maritime operators.
This is precisely the structural gap that cabotage policy was meant to address over the long term. Industry voices — including those within the Maritime Workers Union of Nigeria (MWUN) — have argued for years that delays in CVFF deployment deprive Nigerian seafarers and vessel operators of the capacity to participate meaningfully in exactly these kinds of market moments.
THE BROADER PICTURE: HOW LONG DOES THIS LAST?
Even if the Strait is reopened to all traffic, there will still be obstacles to shipping. The United States has said it will take six months to clear mines it believes have been laid by Iran. Underwriters are unlikely to restore normal insurance ratings for Hormuz transits until that demining is well advanced and a sustained ceasefire holds. Assuming flows through the Strait gradually resume from June, global oil supply is projected to decline by 3.9 million barrels per day on average for the full year 2026.
That projection carries significant uncertainty. Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei — who assumed authority following the death of his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in the February strikes — has shown no sign of yielding control of Hormuz as a strategic lever. Diplomatic talks in Islamabad in April yielded no breakthrough. The current impasse, in other words, may define the global shipping environment for the remainder of 2026 and beyond.
For Nigeria’s maritime community — port operators, terminal concessionaires, freight forwarders, tanker operators, inland waterway transporters, and policymakers alike — the Hormuz crisis is not a distant geopolitical story. It is actively reshaping the commercial environment in which every Nigerian maritime stakeholder operates, daily.
Waterways News continues to monitor developments in the Strait of Hormuz and their implications for Nigerian ports, shipping, and the blue economy. Feedback and industry perspectives are welcome.
Blue Economy
Water Transport Operators Push For Recognition At The Table As FTAN Demands Tourism Policy Reforms
Water Transport Operators Push For Recognition At The Table As FTAN Demands Tourism Policy Reforms
By Okeoghene Onoriobe | Waterways News
Nigeria’s tourism sector needs urgent policy reform, stronger collaboration and fresh investment to compete globally and water transport operators who are members of the Federation of Tourism Associations of Nigeria (FTAN) want that conversation to include the boats, ferries and waterway routes that move millions of Nigerians and could move even more tourists.
That was the underlying idea raised by Comrade Babatope Fajemirokun National President of Waterfront Boat Owners and Transporters Association of Nigeria (WABOTAN) represented by Chief Raymond Gold, National PRO of WABOTAN, at the ninth Nigeria Tourism Investors Forum and Exhibition (NTIFE), held over two days in Abuja under the theme “Tourism Transformation Through Collaboration, Policy Alignment and Investment.” The events took place between Thursday 30 to Friday 31 of July 2026. Waterfront Boat Owners and Transporters Association of Nigeria (WABOTAN), is a corporate member of FTAN
The forum drew policymakers, investors, tourism operators and development partners.
FTAN President Dr Aliyu Badaki used his welcome remarks to press the Federal Government to overhaul tourism-related laws and regulatory frameworks that he said breed duplication, institutional conflict and legal uncertainty for operators. He said the federation’s newly developed Tourism Transformation Mandate (TTM) is meant to unify every segment of the tourism value chain.
Babatope Fajemirokun, through Chief Gold emphasizes the fact that this value chain for Nigeria’s coastal cities, riverine communities and inland waterway corridors, runs directly through water transport.
Badaki argued that fragmented efforts and weak coordination have held back the sector for years, and called for regulation that enables rather than inhibits growth.
Minister of Art, Culture, Tourism and Creative Economy, Hannatu Musawa, who declared the forum open, described tourism as a strategic pillar for economic diversification. She said government cannot finance tourism transformation alone and that private capital must lead, with government’s role limited to creating an enabling environment for investors.
In his keynote address, Sen. Ibrahim Ida called for stronger collaboration among government, the private sector and host communities, saying tourism can generate jobs, foreign exchange and diversification if properly harnessed.
Panel sessions, moderated by Justina Ovat of Calabar Hospitality House Limited, featured Nigeria Tourism Development Authority (NTDA) Director-General Dr Ola Awakan, who called for policy consistency and investor-friendly incentives, and Dr Philip Maga of the National Institute for Hospitality and Tourism (NIHOTOUR), who flagged the need for stronger workforce training to close skills gaps across the hospitality industry.
Hospitality entrepreneur Lanre Balogun urged investors to prioritise disciplined, long-term planning.
Nigeria Watch
For Nigeria’s water transport sector, NTIFE’s reform push is not a side conversation. Rather, it is a direct stakeholder issue. FTAN’s corporate membership includes Waterfront Boat Owners and Transporters Association of Nigeria (WABOTAN) and the Association of Tourist Boat Operators and Water Transporters of Nigeria (ATBOWATON), both drawn from the ranks of operators who run the boats, ferries and water taxis that already serve Lagos’s creeks, the Niger Delta’s riverine towns and coastal leisure routes. Their presence inside FTAN means the federation’s demand for regulatory clarity and coordinated policy carries an inland-waterways and blue-economy dimension that goes beyond hotels and heritage sites.
That matters because water tourism sits at an awkward regulatory junction in Nigeria. A tourist boat operator answers not only to tourism authorities but potentially to NIWA, LASWA (in Lagos) and NIMASA on safety standards, and state government tourism boards, precisely the kind of overlapping jurisdiction Badaki described as breeding “duplication, institutional conflicts… and operational uncertainty.”
The 2026 Supreme Court ruling affirming NIWA’s regulatory authority over inland waterways nationwide, following the NIWA-LASWA jurisdictional dispute, is a live example of the kind of institutional friction FTAN’s Tourism Transformation Mandate is meant to resolve, at least on the tourism side.
Musawa’s call for private capital to lead tourism investment also lands squarely on water transport operators’ desks. Vessel acquisition, safety retrofitting, jetty infrastructure and life-jacket compliance all require capital that small-scale operators, including WABOTAN’s member-cooperative structure, have struggled to access, a gap that echoes the long-running CVFF disbursement failure in the cabotage shipping sector and underscores why financing bottlenecks are not unique to cargo and passenger shipping alone.
If FTAN’s push for policy alignment succeeds in drawing water transport formally into Nigeria’s tourism investment architecture, operators like WABOTAN and ATBOWATON could gain a stronger claim to inclusion in infrastructure programmes such as the Omi-Eko electric ferry project and LASWA’s ferry safety development initiatives, turning routine commuter water transport into a recognised leisure and tourism asset, not just a transportation afterthought.
For a sector accustomed to being regulated but rarely consulted, this call by Babatope Fajemirokun is a modest but meaningful call.
Editor's Choice
RUSSIA’S ARCTIC OIL GAMBLE: WHAT AN ICEBREAKER FLEET TEACHES A REGION THAT STILL FIGHTS PIRATES WITH GUNBOATS
RUSSIA’S ARCTIC OIL GAMBLE: WHAT AN ICEBREAKER FLEET TEACHES A REGION THAT STILL FIGHTS PIRATES WITH GUNBOATS
By Oghenewoke Osaweren | Waterways News
Russia has just done something no country bordering the Gulf of Guinea could attempt: it built an entire alternative shipping corridor, armed it with nuclear icebreakers, and is now using it to route around the world’s most contested waters. For West African maritime observers, the story is not really about oil. It is about what state capacity buys a country when global shipping lanes turn hostile and what its absence costs one.
A CONVOY BUILT TO DODGE THE WORLD’S HOTSPOTS
More than a dozen Suezmax, Aframax and Medium Range tankers are currently transiting or staged along Russia’s Northern Sea Route, carrying crude that analysts estimate at roughly 8 million barrels, already more than half the total volume Russia moved during the entirety of last year’s four-month Arctic navigation season. The largest cluster has formed in the Kara Sea, where the Suezmax Dinasty and five Aframax tankers are holding position, likely awaiting nuclear icebreaker escort or better ice conditions before pushing east toward Asian buyers.
Independent tracking data corroborates the scale of the buildup. Vessel-tracking figures show at least seven tankers involved in Russia’s eastbound Arctic crude campaign, with five Aframax tankers and another vessel holding position while one tanker had already begun its eastbound transit, together capable of carrying roughly 5 million barrels of crude. Russia shipped 4.16 million barrels a day of crude in the four weeks to July 26, with tankers beginning to use the Northern Sea Route to China as Arctic ice retreats, part of a broader pattern of Russian crude sidestepping Red Sea risk.
THREE NUCLEAR ICEBREAKERS, ONE STRATEGIC CALCULATION
Moscow has deployed three nuclear-powered icebreakers, Sibir, Yakutiya and Ural, along the route this season, with Ural stationed near Wrangel Island, a choke point that has slowed convoys for two consecutive summers. The route shaves thousands of nautical miles off the journey between northwest Russia and Asia compared with the Suez Canal, but it is navigable to conventional tankers only for a few summer months, and even then only with heavy icebreaker support.
Russia is leaning on that seasonal window precisely because its conventional options have narrowed. The push helps Moscow sustain historically high export rates while avoiding the pitfalls of sailing through Houthi-threatened Red Sea waters, on top of continuing tension around the Strait of Hormuz and Ukraine’s demonstrated reach against Russian energy infrastructure and tankers.
It is worth noting, however, that the Arctic route has not been Russia’s unqualified success story. An analysis published earlier this year found that cargo volumes on the Northern Sea Route actually fell for the first time since 2022, dropping to 37 million tons in 2025 against an official target of 80 million tons, a reminder that ambition and icebreakers alone do not guarantee results, even for a state willing to spend billions building Arctic infrastructure.
THE GULF OF GUINEA COMPARISON NO ONE IS MAKING
Here is the part of the story West African readers should sit with. Russia’s answer to shipping-lane insecurity was to engineer an entirely new corridor, pouring state capital into a fleet of nuclear icebreakers so that geography itself becomes a strategic asset. Nigeria and its Gulf of Guinea neighbours face a comparable insecurity problem, but with none of that infrastructure to fall back on.
Piracy in the Gulf of Guinea has fallen from its mid-2010s peak, credited in part to Nigeria’s Deep Blue Project, NIMASA’s expanded intelligence and patrol capacity, and coordination among regional navies. Yet the region accounted for 92 percent of all crew kidnappings recorded globally in 2025, with 23 seafarers taken hostage, up from 12 the year before, and analysts still point to limited naval patrols and porous coastal borders as unresolved weaknesses.
Nigeria has responded this year by deepening security partnerships, including a new naval cooperation arrangement with the United Arab Emirates covering intelligence sharing, technology transfer and indigenous shipbuilding, while regional navies have moved to activate a Combined Maritime Task Force for the Gulf of Guinea.
Those are real steps. But they remain fundamentally reactive, protecting an existing corridor rather than building an alternative one. Russia’s Arctic convoy shows what the other end of that spectrum looks like, a state treating maritime routing itself as a lever of economic survival, at a cost of tens of billions of dollars and a fleet of icebreakers most nations could never justify.
THE TAKEAWAY FOR NIGERIAN MARITIME POLICY
The lesson is not that Nigeria should chase Arctic-scale infrastructure as geography and economics make that irrelevant here. The lesson is narrower and more urgent. Global shipping is entering an era where major exporters are actively re-routing around instability rather than simply insuring against it. If the Gulf of Guinea’s own security gaps persist while global shippers have more alternative corridors than ever to choose from, the region risks losing traffic not because vessels were attacked, but because they were rerouted before they ever arrived.
For a corridor that already competes with Russian, Gulf and North African crude for the same Asian buyers, that is not an abstract risk. It is a market-share question with a naval-capacity answer.
Blue Economy
NIMASA Deepens Seafarer Welfare Push, Signs Off Renewed Mission to Seafarers Collaboration
NIMASA Deepens Seafarer Welfare Push, Signs Off Renewed Mission to Seafarers Collaboration
By Ighoyota Onaibre | Waterways News
The Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) has restated its commitment to improving the welfare of Nigerian seafarers, pledging deeper collaboration with the Mission to Seafarers (MtS) as part of ongoing reforms in the sector.
The commitment came as the Director-General, Dr Dayo Mobereola, received a delegation from the Mission to Seafarers at the agency’s Lagos headquarters, led by the Chairman of MtS Lagos, Chief Adebayo Sarumi, alongside the Regional Director for Africa, Reverend Cedric Rautenbach.
Speaking on behalf of the DG, NIMASA’s Executive Director for Operations, Engr. Fatai Taiye Adeyemi, said the agency would continue tightening certification processes, expanding capacity development programmes, and strengthening welfare policies for seafarers both at sea and in port, in partnership with stakeholders such as the Mission to Seafarers.
Chief Sarumi commended NIMASA’s ongoing reforms and expressed confidence that closer collaboration would translate into tangible welfare gains for Nigerian maritime professionals. Reverend Rautenbach, for his part, clarified that while the Mission to Seafarers and Nigeria’s Port Welfare Committees pursue a shared objective which is the the wellbeing of seafarers. The two bodies operate on distinct, complementary mandates, making coordination between them essential to strengthening on-ground support at Nigerian ports.
The meeting covered decent working conditions, welfare service gaps, and areas of mutual collaboration. NIMASA said the engagement aligns with its obligations under the Maritime Labour Convention (MLC) 2006, and forms part of a broader push toward stronger regulatory oversight and stakeholder engagement on seafarer rights.
Nigeria Watch
Beyond the courtesy-visit optics, this meeting lands on a fault line that has dogged Nigerian seafarer welfare for years: fragmented institutional responsibility. NIMASA regulates and certifies; Port Welfare Committees are meant to deliver frontline services at berths; the Mission to Seafarers, a faith-based international NGO, fills gaps neither statutory body always reaches. These gaps are chaplaincy, shore leave support, emergency assistance, and advocacy for stranded or abandoned crew.
Rautenbach’s point about “distinct but complementary mandates” is worth pressing on, because in practice that distinction has often meant duplication in some areas and total absence in others.
Nigerian seafarers have long reported patchy access to welfare facilities at ports like Apapa, Tin Can Island, and Onne. Such reports include inconsistent internet access, poor rest facilities, and slow response to cases of wage default or abandonment by errant shipowners, issues MWUN has repeatedly raised in past CBA compliance disputes.
NIMASA’s MLC 2006 framing is the right one, but enforcement, not policy language, remains the industry’s persistent complaint. If this renewed MtS partnership is to mean more than another photo-op at headquarters, it should translate into a documented, port-by-port welfare service map: which ports have functioning seafarer centres, which Port Welfare Committees are actually active, and where the Mission to Seafarers’ Flying Angel network is present versus where seafarers are effectively on their own.
Nigerian crews calling at their own national ports deserve better than welfare support that depends on which NGO happens to be in town.
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