On 21 July, Houthi forces announced a blockade of Saudi Arabian ports. The next day, the spot rate to move a very large crude carrier from the Gulf to China hit $77.96 a tonne — four times its five-year average, and equivalent to roughly $21 million of war-risk cover priced into a single transit. No government set that number. A small pool of marine underwriters in London did, working from satellite tracking and loss data, modelling a scenario the broker WTW had already flagged to clients: what Lloyd’s List called a “simultaneous closure nightmare” — Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb shut at once. That phrase has barely left the trade press. It should. It is the most accurate available description of who is managing access to the world’s two most important oil chokepoints this summer, and the answer is not Washington, Tehran or Riyadh.
The mechanics trace back to 28 February, when US and Israeli strikes killed Iran’s supreme leader and triggered Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz — roughly 20% of global oil trade, gone almost overnight. What followed has been five months of ceasefires that never quite held: an April truce under which Iran kept charging $1 million tolls per ship, a June memorandum agreed in Islamabad that collapsed within three weeks when Iran struck three commercial vessels in early July, and a Houthi blockade threat against Saudi ports layered on top from 21 July. Through all of it, one institution has behaved more consistently than any negotiating table: Lloyd’s Joint War Committee, which designates “Listed Areas” for war risk, and the underwriters, P&I clubs (the mutual insurers that cover most of the world’s merchant fleet for liability and war risk) and reinsurers who price cover inside those areas. Their published updates now function as the closest thing the Gulf has to a real-time policy signal.
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