Managing Maritime Risks and Building Supply Chain Resilience Amid Strait of Hormuz Hostilities

Two supertankers were hit by projectiles late on August 31 while exiting the Strait of Hormuz, as reported by Reuters on September 1. Both the tankers were struck near Oman, with no party claiming responsibility. The attacks came hours after a resumption of strikes between the U.S. and Iran, ending weeks of relative calm during which oil shipments through the strait had recovered to about half of pre-war levels. Brent crude rose roughly 1.7% the next day, trading above $92 a barrel.

Both tankers were sailing with their AIS transponders switched off, a detail that says a lot about current conditions. When crews go dark to avoid being targeted, visibility drops for everyone, including the shippers whose cargo is on board.

The Impact of Maritime Security Threats on Global Trade Lanes

The strait normally carries around 20 million barrels of oil per day, roughly a fifth of world petroleum consumption, and there is no full substitute for it. The IEA estimates that available pipeline capacity bypassing the strait — Saudi Arabia's East-West line and the UAE's Habshan-Fujairah line — tops out somewhere between 3.5 and 5.5 million barrels per day. The math is unforgiving: even at half strength, Hormuz moves more oil than every workaround combined.

Insurance is where the risk shows up first, often before freight rates or oil prices react. As reported in July, additional war-risk premiums for Gulf transits had climbed from 1%–3% of hull value to 7.5%–10% as attacks intensified, with some underwriters reluctant to quote at all. On a $100 million tanker, that swing alone is a seven-figure line item per voyage. Those costs flow straight into landed costs for anyone buying crude, LNG, petrochemicals or feedstocks sourced from the Gulf.

The knock-on effects reach past energy. Gulf ports handle a meaningful share of regional container transshipment, crews are harder to secure for listed high-risk areas, and vessels sailing dark complicate everything from ETA planning to sanctions screening.

Strategic Mitigations: Rerouting, Insurance, and Contingency Planning

Some responses are available right now.

Reroute What Can Be Rerouted

Saudi Aramco spent months diverting volumes to Red Sea ports before recently resuming Gulf loadings, presenting a live example of routing flexibility in practice. Map which of your inbound flows have viable alternatives (pipeline allocations, different load ports, substitute origins) and which are structurally locked to Hormuz. Treat the second list as your true exposure.

Reprice Risk into Your Contracts

War-risk premiums, demurrage from delayed transits and security costs belong in your landed-cost models today, not at quarter-end. Review Incoterms and force majeure language on Gulf-linked contracts so you know who actually bears these costs when a vessel diverts or a policy is cancelled on 48-hour notice.

Build Inventory Buffers Selectively

Blanket stockpiling ties up working capital. Buffer the inputs that are Hormuz-dependent, hard to substitute and critical to revenue, and let the rest run lean.

Pre-Qualify Alternatives Before You Need Them

Backup suppliers, alternative load ports and secondary carriers take weeks to onboard. An escalation is the wrong time to start.

Watch the Leading Indicators

Insurance quotes, AIS gaps and tanker spot rates typically move before headlines do. Someone on your team should own that watchlist.

Building Long-Term Resilience With GEP Supply Chain Consulting

Episodic firefighting eventually has to give way to structural resilience. GEP's supply chain risk management consulting embeds risk assessment directly into supply chain strategy, spanning geopolitical, environmental, financial and operational dimensions. GEP prioritizes risks by likelihood and business impact (tagging near-term threats as urgent and longer-horizon ones as strategic), helping clients build mitigation plans and escalation mechanisms, supported by real-time dashboards for executive and operational teams. For organizations with heavy Gulf exposure, that means moving from reacting to each tanker strike toward a network designed to absorb the next one.

Industry Focus: Energy, Utilities, and Chemical Supply Chains

Energy and utilities firms face the most direct exposure through crude, LNG and fuel procurement, where a single blocked transit can ripple into generation costs and hedging positions. Chemical manufacturers sit one step downstream but often feel it harder: naphtha, methanol and other Gulf-sourced feedstocks have fewer substitutes than crude itself, and contract structures in the sector tend to pass volatility through slowly. For all three, supplier concentration in the Gulf deserves the same board-level scrutiny that tariff exposure received over the past two years.

The Way Forward for Supply Chains

The strait has swung between calm and crisis several times this year, and nothing in the current diplomacy suggests that pattern is ending. The supply chains that come through intact will be the ones that priced the risk in early and planned for the version of events they hoped wouldn't happen.