Great Hormuz escape: 80% of traffic goes ‘dark’ as US flips Iran’s playbook
https://gulfnews.com/world/mena/80-of-hormuz-traffic-goes-dark-and-keeps-oil-prices-in-check-1.500649281Open linkView original on lemmy.caSyndicated from the fediverse. Read and engage on the original instance.
View original on lemmy.cahttps://gulfnews.com/world/mena/80-of-hormuz-traffic-goes-dark-and-keeps-oil-prices-in-check-1.500649281Open linkView original on lemmy.ca
10 replies
Take this article with a big grain of salt. The source is Kpler (specifically their Marine Traffic program). I have multiple enterprise accounts and my trading platform integrates to Kpler via API.
I will admit that Kpler have, by far, the most AIS data, but they are the worst at scrubbing it and filtering it, showing more wholesale hallucinations (e.g., ships circling far inland) than any other program like this.
My other programs like Pole Star, AIS Live (S&P energy), etc do show a rise in dark transits but no where near what this article claimed. If you have enterprise access and are quite bored you can watch this in realtime.
Also Kpler are attention whores in my industry placing stories in every two dudes and a cat publication that will run them.
The only way to know this for sure it to look arrivals at Indian and PRC terminals/refineries four to six weeks from now.
I guess the current stable oil price already reflects this (they would know) but they're exaggerating it to put more pressure on Iran
Yeah, I do, I also think that there is a lot of smoke around these boasts and claims and with the advent of very large Unmanned Underwater Vehicles such as the Orca I think it is entirely possible that part of what is happening is a top secret demonstration of the capacity to transport oil and cargo via UUVs (unmanned subs) or perhaps even "narco subs" which are basically just boats that float mostly below the waterline, they aren't true subs.
https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2026/08/u-s-navy-orca-xluuv-completes-1000-mile-pacific-transit/
I don't think it is necessarily being demonstrated at scale, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was being demonstrated at a larger scale than people might expect. You have to realize every naval power in the world is POURING money into UUVs and that this would absolutely be a flashpoint to demonstrate a dominance in that.
All that to say, I imagine there are multiple levels of shadows here when we talk about "shadow fleets"... I am skeptical I KNOW how the oil is really moving through the strait to some degree and I am sure that ships simply turning off their transponders is most of it... but also at some point a naval power is going to use logistics UUVs to keep shipping going through a bottleneck to a limited extent during a conflict to demonstrate their power and test a new form of escaping blockade... and I don't see why right now isn't that moment especially since whoever does it first can exploit a major strategic blindspot in the nation attempting to enforce the blockade (they believe they are enacting unsustainable economic damage when they are not).
This kind of thing would also play right into the hands of Trump and others purposefully fucking with oil prices using insider information.
Also see https://www.seatrade-maritime.com/security/unmanned-cargo-ship-destroyed-off-yemen
Meaning absolutely no offense, there are several topics here. One, the article from Informa (not a very reliable company - I worked for them when they owned Lloyd's List Intelligence where I was an analyst) says the ship was unmanned, but not that it was an unmanned ship, i.e., they more likely mean abandoned.
But for the sake of argument let's assume someone is using unmanned cargo ships. Then this became a problem of scale. The tankers that take crude/LNG from the Gulf are the largest type in the world. A VLCC (very large crude carrier) goes from 200k dwt (deadweight, how much a ship can carry) up to 400k. Even if unmanned cargo vessels were in use, there is absolutely no way the IMO, let alone the P&I clubs, would allow a ship that big to be unmanned.
You could use smaller ships, but the economics would not work at all.
All that said people are working very hard to get unmanned cargo ships to be a thing, so you are right about that.
Unmanned cargo ships are already a thing.
I am not suggesting the bulk cargo size is anywhere as big, I think there is a proof of concept demonstration being done, but my point was it might be quite a bit higher than just a handful of times, this technology has scaled VERY fast.
Unmanned vehicles would be used for short hops through bottlenecks at which point they would transfer it to a more efficient ship.
all of that seems vaguely technically plausible but it sure doesn't sound like it's going to actually lower oil prices
I don't know if it needs to be that big of a physical impact to serve as a destabilizing factor on how certain powers are about how the chips fall here.
To think all this bullshit started because Donald needed to distract the world from his appearances in the Epstein files
Fucking hell, and all drags on and on...
Old school smuggler tactics.