The document was short. Gard, the Norwegian mutual insurer, posted it on 1 March 2026, the day after US and Israeli strikes on Iran began. It was a notice cancelling Gard’s war-risk extension for the Persian/Arabian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman on 72 hours’ notice. No parliament authorised it, and no court reviewed it. The same day, other International Group clubs posted near-identical notices, all taking effect on 5 March. Skuld, NorthStandard, the London P&I Club and the American Club were among them. Skuld spelled out the reason: its reinsurers’ appetite for war risk was tightening fast.
By then, tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz had already collapsed. Iran had answered the strikes by attacking shipping. Within two days at least three tankers had been damaged, a seafarer had been killed and around 150 ships were stranded around the strait.
Missiles and drones emptied the waterway. Insurance notices then wrote that new reality into contracts, and war premiums decided, ship by ship, who could still afford to move. The question is what these institutions are, and what they’ve been doing every other day, when nothing so dramatic is happening and nobody is watching.
The three keys
Ships don’t need insurance the way cars do. They need it the way cities need functioning sewers: without it, the whole system stops.
A commercial ocean-going vessel normally sails under three distinct layers of coverage. Only one of them, liability cover, is compulsory in law at most major ports. The other two are demanded by contract rather than by statute, and together the three set the terms on which a ship can trade.
Hull and Machinery insurance covers physical damage to the vessel, the layer most readers understand as insurance. Cargo cover protects goods aboard, typically required by the charterer or cargo owner as a condition of contract. The third layer, Protection and Indemnity or P&I, is the one that matters most for what follows. It covers third-party liabilities: crew injury and death, oil pollution liability, wreck removal, cargo damage claims, collision liability with other vessels, port damage. It carries the largest potential exposure and is the least visible from the outside.
P&I cover isn’t optional for any vessel seeking to operate commercially. Since amendments to the Maritime Labour Convention entered into force in January 2017, every ship subject to the MLC must carry a financial security certificate from a recognised provider, in practice a P&I club, confirming cover for outstanding crew wages, repatriation costs, and death or disability compensation. Port state control authorities under the Paris MOU, covering European and North Atlantic ports, and the Tokyo MOU, covering Asia-Pacific, inspect for these certificates as routine. India requires every merchant ship of 300 gross tonnage or more calling at its ports to present a verifiable P&I certificate, a rule its shipping regulator tightened in 2025 and which now sits under the new Merchant Shipping Act 2025, in force since March 2026.
Remove the P&I layer, with no other qualifying insurance or proven self-insurance in its place, and port access disappears first. Under EU Directive 2009/20/EC, a ship of 300 gross tonnage or more found without its insurance certificate can be expelled from port. Every other EU state must then refuse it entry until the certificate is produced.
The clubs and syndicates that issue these policies hold, collectively, a veto over every commercial maritime voyage on earth. No treaty grants it to them; the commercial architecture leaves shipowners no alternative.
Lloyd's of London and Lloyd's Register: two organisations, one name
Lloyd's of London is the insurance marketplace where syndicates underwrite hull, cargo, and war risk cover. Lloyd's Register is a classification society that surveys ships and certifies structural and safety standards on behalf of flag states. They share a historical origin in Edward Lloyd's coffee house in London in the 1680s, but perform entirely different functions with no operational relationship.
Hull insurers require a ship to stay "in class" with a member of the International Association of Classification Societies, which can be Lloyd's Register or any of its peers such as DNV, ABS or ClassNK, and cover can end automatically if class is lost. That is how a classification society's structural rules end up enforced through the insurance market as much as through law. Lloyd's Register is not a P&I insurer and has no direct relationship with P&I clubs.Twelve clubs, one constitution
The International Group of P&I Clubs comprises twelve mutual marine insurance associations. “Mutual” means that the members, shipowners and charterers, are at once the insured and the insurers, pooling risk and levying supplementary assessments when claims exceed premiums. Between them, the twelve clubs insure approximately 87% of the world’s ocean-going tonnage by gross tonnage, holding a near-monopoly on third-party maritime liability coverage. Their registered homes span the UK, Luxembourg, Scandinavia, Japan, Bermuda and the US: Gard and Skuld are Norwegian, the Swedish Club operates from Gothenburg, the Japan P&I Club from Tokyo and the American Club from New York. NorthStandard, formed in February 2023 when the North of England P&I Association and The Standard Club merged, shows how the group has consolidated while its governance structure has stayed constant.
The clubs operate a pooling arrangement. Each club keeps the first US$10 million of any claim that falls within the pool, and anything above that is shared among all twelve under the Group’s Pooling Agreement, with the Group’s own captive reinsurer and a large commercial reinsurance programme stacked on top. The pool is why the clubs move as a bloc on ordinary liability risks. War is different. Club rulebooks exclude war risks from core P&I cover. The war extensions withdrawn in March 2026, chiefly cover sold to charterers, sat outside the pool, and each club reinsured them separately in the same small Lloyd’s and London market. When those reinsurers used their right to exclude Gulf claims on 72 hours’ notice, each club that held such cover got the same message within the same weekend. The near-identical notices were the reinsurers’ decision, passed down the chain.
Above the clubs in the reinsurance stack sit the Lloyd’s market and global commercial reinsurers. When reinsurers pull back from a zone, they constrain the clubs’ capacity at once.
Hull war risk, meaning damage from military action, piracy or terrorism, sits outside P&I cover altogether. It is bought as a separate policy from specialist war underwriters, above all in the Lloyd’s and London company markets, with Nordic insurers such as Gard’s commercial war business close behind. The body that maps the danger for London is the Joint War Committee, a joint committee of the Lloyd’s Market Association and the International Underwriting Association. The JWC maintains the Listed Areas document, formally the “Hull War, Piracy, Terrorism and Related Perils Listed Areas”. It names the waters where owners must notify their war underwriters before entering, and where underwriters may charge an additional premium for each voyage.
When a conflict flares, the committee can redraw the list within days. No government drafted these circulars, and none signs them off.
Why the clubs all moved on the same day
The clubs did not need a meeting. Their war-risk extensions were reinsured in the same narrow market. On the weekend the strikes began, those reinsurers exercised their right to exclude Gulf claims on 72 hours' notice. Club after club received the same message that weekend and passed it on to its members. Within days most were offering "buy-back" cover, which was the same protection sold back at a fresh price. The apparent solidarity was the reinsurance chain at work.Governance without a name
None of what happened in 2026 was new. The governance had been operating on every vessel carrying P&I cover, every day, for decades, enforcing safety standards, environmental compliance and crew welfare requirements that international treaty regimes have struggled to make stick.
The International Safety Management Code is mandatory for merchant vessels under SOLAS, the convention on safety at sea. It requires documented Safety Management Systems, internal audits, external verification. The proximate enforcer is supposed to be the flag state. Open registries, which register ships regardless of the owner’s nationality, vary enormously. Panama, Liberia and the Marshall Islands, the three largest, together account for roughly 45% of world tonnage by deadweight, and all three sit on the Paris MOU’s “White List” of better-performing flags. Further down the table, some smaller registries have neither the staff nor the authority to compel compliance from an operator whose only connection to the flag state is a registration fee. Port state control fills some of the gap by detaining deficient vessels that arrive at port, but only after the deficiencies are found aboard an operating ship.
The enforcer that works in the other direction, before the accident, is the P&I club. A club that underwrites a vessel with a deficient Safety Management System bears full claims liability when that vessel’s management failure causes an accident: an oil spill, a crew fatality, a collision. Clubs conduct pre-entry condition surveys, require copies of audit records, and reserve the right to void claims where non-compliance contributed to a loss.
Clubs can decline to cover vessels they consider substandard because they bear the consequences if they don’t. In this way the standards written into IMO conventions end up enforced by insurers.
P&I clubs cover oil pollution liability, and the MV Prestige disaster in 2002 showed how large such liabilities can grow. Some 64,000 tonnes of heavy fuel oil spilled off Galicia, fouling coastline in Spain, France and Portugal. In 2019 a Spanish court entered judgment for €855 million against the London P&I Club, the vessel’s insurer: the club’s full US$1 billion limit, less the fund it had already deposited. Two decades after the spill, the English Court of Appeal refused in December 2024 to enforce that judgment in England, and the amount is still contested.
Crew welfare is no different. The MLC’s 2017 financial security amendments require ships to carry P&I certificates confirming cover for repatriation, outstanding wages, and death or disability compensation. When a shipowner abandons seafarers, leaving them stranded in foreign ports without wages, food or a way home, the flag state is nominally responsible but frequently cannot act across jurisdictions. The international abandonment database logged a then-record 85 cases in 2020. The ITF keeps its own, separate count, and by 2025 it was recording 410 vessels and 6,223 seafarers abandoned in a single year, the worst on record. In October 2022, a Hong Kong shipowner abandoned thirteen Filipino crew aboard the Yangtze Harmony in Singapore. The vessel’s MLC financial-security certificate had been issued by the Swedish Club, which was obliged to cover up to four months of unpaid wages plus the crew’s repatriation. By April 2023 the crew were owed about $430,000. The club at first held back payment pending a court order, then paid. Across this ship and a sister vessel abandoned by the same owner, the ITF recovered about $1 million in back pay for 43 seafarers. The certificate turned an absent owner’s debt into an insurer’s obligation.
What evasion requires shows how well the system works. Iran and Russia have each assembled shadow fleets of tankers because the only path around the governance function is to exit the mainstream shipping economy entirely and build a parallel one from scratch.
The shadow fleet: freedom and exposure
By September 2025, S&P Global's count of the wider "dark fleet" carrying Russian, Iranian and Venezuelan oil had reached 978 tankers, nearly a fifth of the world's tanker capacity. The counts shift as vessels are identified or reclassified, but the order of magnitude is consistent across sources. These vessels operate without International Group P&I cover, because IG clubs won't insure trades that breach sanctions, such as Russian oil sold above the G7 price cap. They run old tonnage, often AIS-dark (their tracking transponders switched off) or actively spoofing position data, registered under flags of convenience. Freedom from the governance system comes with loss of the pooled reinsurance backstop, loss of legitimate port access in most major jurisdictions, and loss of recourse through standard maritime law.The map of permission
The governance described so far sets what ships must be and do as a continuing condition of cover. The JWC Listed Areas add geography: insurance also governs where ships may go.
A vessel intending to enter a listed zone must notify its war risk underwriters in advance, and may be charged an Additional War Risk Premium, known as a breach premium, priced as a percentage of hull value for the transit period. When conditions deteriorate sharply, underwriters stop quoting. A vessel that cannot obtain war cover at any price is commercially unable to proceed. No law stops it from sailing, yet the practical effect is the same.
Take a vessel that has passed every ISM audit, holds valid P&I cover, meets the MARPOL pollution rules and carries its MLC financial security documentation. If the JWC has listed its intended route and underwriters have stopped quoting, that ship is still commercially unable to proceed.
The geographic scope of the list reflects the history of conflict at sea. The Persian Gulf and Gulf of Aden have been listed for years. The Russian and Ukrainian waters of the northern Black Sea and the Sea of Azov were listed on 15 February 2022, nine days before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and the listing was widened in March. The listed area covering the Gulf of Aden and the southern Red Sea was pushed north to latitude 18°N on 18 December 2023, as Houthi attacks on commercial shipping escalated. JWC Circular JWLA-033, issued 3 March 2026, added Bahrain, Djibouti, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar and merged the Gulf, the Gulf of Oman, the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Aden and the southern Red Sea into a single, larger listed area.
The map has kept moving since: circulars in July and September 2026 redrew it again. No government drafted JWLA-033, and none had to approve it.
The difference from a state-issued prohibition is enforcement. A government that declares a zone off-limits must enforce that declaration physically, legally and diplomatically. The JWC enforces nothing, because it doesn’t need to: the moment underwriters stop quoting for a zone, no commercially rational operator sails there without cover. The map is privately drawn and commercially enforced, at no government’s instruction.
The blockade no government ordered
Three episodes, each set in motion differently, show the system at work. In each, insurance ended up deciding which ships could trade, and on what terms.
Iran, 2012 — insurance as a government weapon.
On 23 January 2012, the EU agreed an embargo on Iranian oil exports and banned European P&I clubs from insuring Iranian oil carriers. The EU built no ships and deployed no interceptors; it told insurers, whose cover Iranian tankers needed in order to trade, to withdraw. The insurance ban took full effect on 1 July 2012, and the US Energy Information Administration singled out the insurance sanctions as particularly effective. An oil buyer can switch suppliers, but a tanker without recognised liability cover cannot easily find another insurer, and the International Group’s clubs then covered an estimated 95% of the world’s tanker fleet. Together with the embargo and US financial sanctions, the ban helped cut Iran’s crude exports from about 2.5 million barrels a day in 2011 to about 1.5 million in 2012, a fall of close to 40%.
The Red Sea, 2023–2025 — insurance as a slow-motion blockade.
From November 2023, Houthi forces began attacking commercial vessels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd paused Red Sea sailings in mid-December 2023, and MSC and CMA CGM followed within days, sending ships around the Cape of Good Hope. On 18 December the JWC pushed its Red Sea listed area north. War-risk premiums for a transit jumped from under 0.1% of a ship’s value to 0.7–1% by early February 2024: for a vessel valued at $120 million, a single transit bill of under $120,000 rose to as much as $1.2 million. By February, container tonnage through the Suez Canal was down 82%, and the detour added roughly ten days to an Asia–Europe voyage.
No government ordered any of these decisions. The attacks came first; carriers and underwriters priced them within days, and those prices decided which ships still took the Red Sea route and which went around the Cape.
Hormuz, 2026 — insurance as the price of passage.
On 28 February 2026, the United States and Israel conducted strikes on Iranian nuclear and military infrastructure. Within a day, International Group clubs had posted 72-hour cancellation notices for their Gulf war-risk extensions, and on 3 March the JWC issued Circular JWLA-033. No government coordinated any of this. The clubs were passing on a decision made one level up, by the reinsurers behind their war-risk books, and within days most had arranged buy-back cover at a new price.
Pricing quickly split by nationality. Within days of the strikes, ships with a perceived American, British or Israeli connection were paying about three times more than other vessels for Middle East war cover, because underwriters judged that Tehran would target those ships first. Risk-based or not, the effect was a private surcharge on nationality that no government had voted for.
Before the war, well over a hundred vessels a day passed through the Strait of Hormuz, and the strait carried about 20 million barrels of oil a day, roughly a fifth of global consumption. By April 2026, a busy day meant about 20 ships: the 20-plus crossings on 18 April were the most since 1 March.
Hull war cover remained technically available throughout. For charterers’ and other liability exposures outside the pool, the Joint War Committee said cover remained in place but could “now be reviewed on a case-by-case basis”. Lloyd’s chief executive Patrick Tiernan told Bloomberg Television on 19 March that requests to insure Hormuz transits had become rare because shipowners were focused on safety and security. Three weeks into the war, the Lloyd’s Market Association pushed back publicly against reports that missing insurance was keeping ships away: cover was available, it said, and safety was the deterrent.
The LMA’s position deserves a direct response. For a $120 million vessel, a Gulf war-risk premium of roughly 0.15–0.25% of hull value before the war, or $180,000 to $300,000 a voyage, climbed to about 5% by mid-March: some $6 million for a single transit. Cover was technically available and commercially brutal. The LMA is right that danger, not paperwork, emptied the strait: the missiles came first, and shipowners said they would not send crews through at any price. But price decided what happened next: which ships moved, at what cost, and on whose nationality the surcharge fell heaviest.
Governments soon stepped in as insurers of last resort. Within days the United States announced a $20 billion reinsurance backstop through its International Development Finance Corporation, with Chubb as lead insurer, and in April Chubb and six other American insurers added a further $20 billion, taking the facility to $40 billion. India approved a sovereign guarantee of about $1.4 billion for a domestic marine insurance pool. In May, South Korea’s financial regulator had ten domestic insurers jointly underwrite transit war cover for ten ships of smaller Korean operators stuck behind the Strait of Hormuz, vessels worth roughly 300 billion won. That they had to improvise showed where commercial authority over the strait had sat: for decades it had been exercised by private clubs and underwriters, and no government had been asked whether that arrangement was acceptable.
When governments had to become insurers
The United States and India built state-backed war-risk schemes, and South Korea marshalled its domestic insurers into a joint one, in the weeks and months after the commercial market repriced the Gulf in March 2026. Governments whose economies depend on Gulf shipping discovered they had no lever to direct the private market that prices access to it, only the option of writing cover themselves.Gard’s short notice was the routine operation of a system that has priced the world’s maritime risk since Edward Lloyd’s London coffee house in the 1680s. Within 72 hours it turned a war zone into a contract term, using a power no one had ever formally granted.
No elected body signs off the JWC’s listed areas, and no treaty constrains a club’s ability to withdraw war risk extensions. The choice of which ships pay triple premiums for which waters goes through no democratic process.
The question of who governs the institutions that govern the sea still has no answer. Governments faced it in practice only when a war put the system to the test and they found they had to become insurers themselves.
Gen AI Disclaimer
Some contents of this page were generated and/or edited with the help of a Generative AI.
Media
Key Sources and References
International Group of P&I Clubs. About the IG. Twelve clubs; approximately 87% of world ocean-going tonnage; US$10 million club retention. https://www.igpandi.org/about/
International Group of P&I Clubs. Group Clubs (member list and registered homes). https://www.igpandi.org/group-clubs/
International Group of P&I Clubs. Reinsurance (Group captive and General Excess of Loss programme). https://www.igpandi.org/reinsurance/
Gard. War insurance for shipowners (hull and machinery war cover). https://gard.no/products-and-services/products/shipowners/war/
European Union. Directive 2009/20/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council on the insurance of shipowners for maritime claims, Articles 2, 3 (definition of insurance, including proved self-insurance) and 5. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/eudr/2009/20/article/2 · https://www.legislation.gov.uk/eudr/2009/20/article/5
International Labour Organization. Maritime Labour Convention, 2006, as amended (MLC, 2006). Financial security amendments in force January 2017. https://www.ilo.org/international-labour-standards/maritime-labour-convention-2006
India. Merchant Shipping Act, 2025 (in force 15 March 2026), notification of the enforcement date. https://simpliance.in/India/EHS/govt_notification/Central/notification-regarding-appointing-15th-march-2026-as-the-date-of-enforcement-of-the-provisions-of-the-merchant-shipping-act-2025-8866
India, Directorate General of Shipping. Merchant Shipping Notice No. 05 of 2025 (verification of P&I certificates of ships calling at Indian ports), 7 May 2025. https://www.dgshipping.gov.in/writereaddata/News/202505081231512036927MSN05of202507May2025signed.pdf
Lloyd’s. History (Edward Lloyd’s coffee house, 1680s). https://www.lloyds.com/about-lloyds/history
Lloyd’s Register. Who we are. https://www.lr.org/en/about-us/who-we-are/
The Swedish Club. Mandatory Club Clauses 2019 (hull), classification clause. https://www.swedishclub.com/uploads/2023/12/TSC-Mandatory-Club-Clauses-2019.pdf
Lloyd’s Market Association. Joint War Committee. https://lmalloyds.com/committee/joint-war-committee/
Joint War Committee. JWLA-032, Hull War, Piracy, Terrorism and Related Perils Listed Areas, 18 December 2023. https://hksoa.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/JWLA032_dated_18.12.2023.pdf
Joint War Committee (a joint LMA/IUA committee). JWLA-033, Hull War, Piracy, Terrorism and Related Perils Listed Areas, 3 March 2026. https://www.lmalloyds.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/JWLA-033_Iran.pdf
TT Club. Listed Area (amended per JWLA-035, 16 September 2026). https://www.ttclub.com/listed-area
Maritime Executive. “Joint War Committee Lists the Black Sea Waters of Ukraine and Russia.” 15 February 2022. https://maritime-executive.com/article/amidst-ukraine-tensions-parts-of-the-black-sea-added-to-war-risk-list
International Maritime Organization. The International Safety Management (ISM) Code. https://www.imo.org/en/ourwork/humanelement/pages/ISMCode.aspx
Paris MoU on Port State Control. Annual Report 2025 (flag performance White List); Organisation. https://parismou.org/year-report/year-report-2025/ · https://parismou.org/organisation/
Tokyo MOU on Port State Control. Annual Report 2025. https://www.tokyo-mou.org/annual-report/2026/05/01/annual-report-2025/
UNCTAD data via SeasiaStats. Global maritime fleet by flag of registration (share of world fleet by deadweight). https://seasiastats.com/statistic/global-maritime-fleet-by-flag-of-registration-in-2024-0ZjOM
Cedre. Prestige incident information sheet. https://cedre.fr/en/resources/incident-information-sheets/prestige
The Kingdom of Spain v The London Steam-Ship Owners’ Mutual Insurance Association Ltd [2024] EWCA Civ 1536. Court of Appeal, 12 December 2024. https://caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ewca/civ/2024/1536
Safety4Sea. “Record number of crew abandonment cases reported in 2020.” 2021. https://safety4sea.com/record-number-of-crew-abandonment-cases-reported-in-2020
ITF Seafarers. “2024 worst year on record for seafarer abandonment, says ITF.” January 2025. https://www.itfseafarers.org/en/news/2024-worst-year-record-seafarer-abandonment-says-itf
Hellenic Shipping News (Nautilus). “ITF warns seafarer abandonment has reached record levels.” January 2026 (2025: 410 vessels, 6,223 seafarers). https://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/itf-warns-seafarer-abandonment-has-reached-record-levels/
ITF Global. “ITF secures freedom for 13 abandoned Filipino seafarers stuck in Singapore for 5 months; $1m in backpay won for crews.” 2023. https://www.itfglobal.org/en/news/itf-secures-freedom-13-abandoned-filipino-seafarers-stuck-in-singapore-5-months-1m-in-backpay
S&P Global Market Intelligence. “Russia’s shadow fleet: formation, operation and continued risks for sanctions compliance teams.” June 2024. https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/blog/russia-s-shadow-fleet-formation-operation-and-continued-risks-for-sanctions-compliance-teams
(Re)in Asia. “IUMI 2025: dark fleet risks continue to grow amid sanctions and tariff pressures” (S&P Global data: 978 tankers, 18.5% of the market). 10 September 2025. https://reinasia.com/iumi-2025-dark-fleet-risks-continues-to-grow-amid-sanctions-and-tariff-pressures/
Skuld. “The price cap on Russian oil and petroleum products.” https://www.skuld.com/topics/legal/sanctions/russia/the-price-cap-on-russian-oil-and-petroleum-products/
U.S. Energy Information Administration. “Sanctions reduced Iran’s oil exports and revenues in 2012.” 26 April 2013. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=11011
Bloomberg. “Iranian oil deadline looms as sanctions on tankers curb supply.” 22 May 2012. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-05-22/iranian-oil-deadline-looms-as-sanctions-on-tankers-curb-supply
Insurance Business. “Price of insuring shipment of goods from Asia to West spikes regardless of route.” 13 February 2024. https://www.insurancebusinessmag.com/us/news/risk-management/price-of-insuring-shipment-of-goods-from-asia-to-west-spikes-regardless-of-route-476958.aspx
Kuehne+Nagel (Lloyd’s List). “MSC, CMA CGM and OOCL suspend passage in Red Sea after attacks increase.” 18 December 2023. https://mykn.kuehne-nagel.com/news/article/msc-cma-cgm-and-oocl-suspend-passage-in-red-s-18-Dec-2023
Enterprise. “Red Sea disruptions increasing risks to global trade, UNCTAD says.” 29 February 2024. https://enterpriseam.com/logistics/2024/02/29/red-sea-disruptions-increasings-risks-to-global-trade-unctad-says/
Insurance Journal (Reuters). “Marine Insurers Cancel War Risk Cover as Iran Conflict Escalates.” 2 March 2026. https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/international/2026/03/02/860022.htm
Yahoo Finance (Oilprice.com). “Shipping Costs Surge as Insurers Drop War Risk Protection in Gulf.” March 2026. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/shipping-costs-surge-insurers-drop-143000136.html
Lloyd’s List. “No, P&I clubs have not ‘cancelled war risk cover’.” March 2026. https://www.lloydslist.com/LL1156515
Lloyd’s List. “US, UK and Israeli ships charged three times more than others for Middle East war cover.” 3 March 2026. https://www.lloydslist.com/LL1156502
U.S. Energy Information Administration. “Amid regional conflict, the Strait of Hormuz remains critical oil chokepoint.” June 2025. Oil flows of about 20 million b/d in 2024, about 20% of global petroleum liquids consumption. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=65504
Al-Monitor (Reuters). “More than 20 vessels pass Strait of Hormuz on Saturday, Kpler data shows.” 20 April 2026. https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2026/04/more-20-vessels-pass-strait-hormuz-saturday-kpler-data-shows
Insurance Journal (Bloomberg). “Lloyd’s CEO Says It’s Critical Mideast War Cover Stays Available.” 19 March 2026. https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/international/2026/03/19/862608.htm
Marine Insight. “War insurance available for ships wanting to cross the Strait of Hormuz per LMA.” March 2026. https://www.marineinsight.com/shipping-news/war-insurance-available-for-ships-wanting-to-cross-the-strait-of-hormuz-per-lma/
Insurance Post. “LMA warns safety fears choking Hormuz, not insurance.” March 2026. https://www.postonline.co.uk/node/7960081
Bloomberg Government. “US Doubles Hormuz Guarantees to $40 Billion With New Partners.” 3 April 2026. https://news.bgov.com/insurance/us-doubles-hormuz-guarantees-to-40-billion-with-new-partners
US International Development Finance Corporation. “DFC, Chubb Announce Additional American Reinsurance Partners and up to $40B in Coverage for Maritime Reinsurance.” 3 April 2026. https://www.dfc.gov/media/press-releases/dfc-chubb-announce-additional-american-reinsurance-partners-and-40b-coverage
Insurance Business. “India green lights $1.4 billion maritime insurance guarantee as cover thins.” 2026. https://www.insurancebusinessmag.com/asia/news/marine/india-green-lights-1-4-billion-maritime-insurance-guarantee-as-cover-thins-572335.aspx
Insurance Business. “Hormuz passage costs one Korean tanker $2 million in premiums.” 2026. https://www.insurancebusinessmag.com/asia/news/marine/hormuz-passage-costs-one-korean-tanker-2-million-in-premiums–report-577599.aspx
Financial Services Commission (Korea). Chairman’s remarks on financial support for shipping affected by the Middle East situation (ten vessels, about ₩0.3 trillion in vessel value, joint underwriting by ten domestic insurers). 21 May 2026. https://www.fsc.go.kr/fsc020401/86944
