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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.
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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