Chinese ships o Thailet them pass; Americans o Israelisturn around. The Chinese shipping company Cosco has announced that resume el traffic toward Middle East just one day after Iran claim his urban guard role in the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran has repeated during these weeks that it does not intend to harm its friends but the almost complete blockade of one of the main global maritime routes has affected everyone. He doesn’t have enough friends and Chinaits main buyer of crude oil, was already beginning to suffer the consequences.
has announced Coscoof state property and with base in Shanghaiwhich is once again accepting container reservations “with immediate effect” to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait. Thus ends one break of three weeks but the company has clarified that the “volatility” of the region can cause changes in shipments, costs and transport conditions. In any case, it represents a substantial favor for China: Cosco is one of the three largest shipping companies in the world and operates a gigantic fleet of tanker boats.
Several factors explain the announcement. China receives from Iran he 13% of the oil it imports and half of the total comes from Strait of Hormuz. Its reserves and the transition to renewable energies have softened the blow but in recent days disturbing symptoms were beginning to appear.
Queues at gas stations
The frightened population Queues formed over the weekend at gas stations and some exhausted their reserves. The National Development and Reform Commission, the economic planning body, intervened this week for the first time since 2013 to contain the price and reduce the impact on consumers and companies.
More than half of cars sold in China currently They are electric but some 300 million drivers they still use vehicles with gasoline or diesel. Beijing has relentlessly condemned the attacks since the start of the war, lamented the law of the American jungle and repeatedly called for respect for Iranian national sovereignty.
He Iranian Foreign Ministry sent on Tuesday to UN Security Council and the International Maritime Organization a note informing that the “non-hostile ships” They will enjoy safe passage through Hormuz. The hostiles, he added, are those who “have not participated in or supported the acts of aggression against Iran and comply with security regulations.”
“These are necessary and proportionate measures to prevent the aggressors from exploiting the Strait of Hormuz to continue their violent operations,” he continued. It did not seem necessary but he clarified that Israeli and American ships were excluded from the category of “innocent or non-hostile passage”. The note was sent after Zhai Jun, Chinese special representative for the Middle East, concluded his visit to the area, where he has held meetings with national leaders and leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council and the Arab League.
He transit for that water throat that controls Iran is still very limited. On Tuesday a Chinese ship loaded with liquefied gas of the oil. The ‘Lucky Guy’, with a Panamanian flag and Hong Kong ownership, is the first Chinese ship of its kind to pass through Hormuz since Tehran proposed a “safe corridor” in the middle of the month and the second since the war began.
He also spent a oil of the Thai giant Bangchak which had been stranded in the Persian Gulf since March 11. Bangkok and Tehran have revealed that no toll was paid. The information is convenient because the global industry is confused by the contradictory information coming from Iran.
Alaeddin Boroujerdi, member of the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, appeared to announce this Sunday a revolutionary tax of two million dollars for every ship that transited Hormuz. “War has a cost and this measure is understandable. It underlines the rights and authority of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” he justified. The Iranian embassy in India denied the existence of this toll on its Twitter account the next day and stated that these statements did not represent Tehran’s official position.
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