Two India-flagged liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) tankers that had been anchored in the Persian Gulf are on the move and are expected to cross the Strait of Hormuz today using a route—through Iran’s territorial waters—that industry experts believe allows Tehran to run a checkpoint and regulate vessel movements through the maritime chokepoint. According to ship tracking data, the two Indian LPG tankers—Pine Gas and Jag Vasant—were nearing the waters between Iran’s Larak and Qeshm islands as of noon of Monday.
Both tankers, sailing close to one another, were broadcasting that they were Indian ships, possibly to avoid any confusion regarding their flag and identity among the Iranian authorities keeping a close watch on the Strait of Hormuz—the narrow waterway between Iran and Oman that connections the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman.
India has been engaged with Iran at the diplomatic level for safe passage of Indian ships through the Strait of Hormuz, which helped two LPG tankers—Shivalik and Nanda Devi—to transit the strait a few days back. In an interview to the Financial Times last week, Foreign Minister S Jaishankar said that there was no “blanket arrangement” with Iran for India-flagged ships, “every ship movement is an individual happening”, he added, while saying that he remained engaged in talks with Tehran. Iran’s Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi had told CBS that Iran was “open” to countries that want to discuss “safe passage of their vessels”.
Jag Vasant, owned and operated by Mumbai-based Great Eastern Shipping Company, was chartered by public sector refiner Bharat Petroleum Corporation (BPCL), while Pine Gas—owned and operated by Mumbai-based Seven Islands Shippining—was chartered by Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), according to sources in the know. As per vessel tracking data, both the LPG tankers are estimated to have started their voyage to India between Sunday night and Monday morning.
Jag Vasant’s deadweight capacity is close to 54,500 tonnes, while that of Pine Gas is around 58,500 tonnes. Deadweight is the total weight a vessel can carry, including cargo, fuel, fresh water, ballast water, provisions, and crew. The two tankers are estimated to be carrying LPG worth over a day of India’s pre-West Asia war consumption. The country’s current LPG consumption is lower amid a supply crunch due to the war.
The effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz has created a major headache for India, which depends on imports to meet a bulk of its energy needs. Around 40% of India’s crude oil imports, over 50% of its LNG imports, and a whopping 90% of its LPG imports transited the Strait, making the chokepoint particularly critical for India’s LPG supplies. India’s annual LPG consumption stands at a little over 33 million tonnes, with an import dependency level of 60%. With 90% of India’s LPG imports coming from West Asia, the Strait of Hormuz effectively sees the movement of around 54% of India’s LPG consumption.
As of Sunday, India had 22 merchant vessels with 611 seafarers stuck in the Persian Gulf, with a majority being oil and gas tankers. They cumulatively held 3.2 lakh tonnes of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), 2 lakh tonnes of LNG, and 16 lakh tonnes of crude oil destined for India. Once Jag Vasant and Pine Gas exit pass through the Strait of Hormuz, the number of Indian vessels in the Persian Gulf would be 20. The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) has been maintaining that India continues to be in constant contact with all relevant governments at various political and diplomatic levels and is making efforts to ensure that Indian vessels can achieve safe and unhindered transit to maintain the country’s energy security.
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Even as Iran’s effective blockade of the Strait of Hormuz continues to be in place, there are strong indications that Tehran is selectively allowing some traffic to transit the Strait’s fraught waters by providing negotiated safe passages based on its talks with other governments and stakeholders, according to industry watchers and vessel tracking data. Rather unusual routes through Iran’s territorial waters taken by vessels that recently transited the Strait of Hormuz are a major signal of Tehran regulating the flow of maritime traffic through the Strait, which accounts for one-fifth of global crude oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) flows.
A number of vessels that have managed to trickle out of the Persian Gulf over the past few days went through the waters between Qeshm island (on Larak’s east) and Larak island to take a longer, circuitous path before crossing the Strait of Hormuz, as against the shorter and straighter conventional path through the middle of the Strait, ship tracking data shows. Jag Vasant and Pine Gas were expected to use the same corridor. Nanda Devi and Shivalik were also estimated to have taken the same route, as did vessels from other countries including Pakistan, Turkey, and Greece. According to observers, this type of an unusual routing through Iran’s territorial waters suggests that the vessels had received Tehran’s nod to exit the Persian Gulf.
Amid the raging conflict in West Asia, which started with the US and Israel launching military strikes against Iran on February 28, the vessel movements through the Strait of Hormuz have crashed. While Iran claimed that the Strait is closed only for the vessels linked to the US, Israel, and their allies while being open for others, a few vessels of evidently neutral countries are also reported to have come under attack. This has led to most trading houses, insurers, and vessels becoming loath to get involved in the prevailing extremely high-risk environment. Meanwhile, diplomatic efforts by various countries to get their vessels out of the Persian Gulf have picked up.
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