Dynacom Tankers Management, one of the few oil tanker owners to have braved the Strait of Hormuz during the Iran war, said US President Donald Trump has been a good news for shipping.
“Trump is doing his best for the world but in parallel he’s doing the best for shipping,” George Procopiou, the company’s founder, said during rare public comments on Monday at the Capital Link Maritime Leaders Summit in Athens.
The Iran war created unprecedented turmoil to oil supply and caused hundreds of tankers to be trapped inside the Persian Gulf while others waited outside the region hoping the conflict would end.
At one stage shortly after the war started, day rates for tankers exceeded $600,000 a day — many multiples above peace time levels — according to the Baltic Exchange in London. The surge boosted profits for shipping companies but simultaneously drove up transport costs across the oil industry.
While other owners balked at sending their tankers through the waterway because of the threat from Iran’s military, Dynacom caught the market’s attention by continuing to do so.
The company managed to send at least eight oil tankers through Hormuz during the war, far more than any other independent owner, according to tracking data compiled by Bloomberg.
Beyond praising the crews serving on tankers that do go through, Procopiou offered few clues on the process of doing so safely.
Dynacom and other companies sending ships through have “crews that are dedicated, they have strong ties to the company, and they have tried to assist and prove that we are reliable counterparties not only on good times, but in bad times as well.”
Procopiou also said that tolls in the waterway will never be accepted.
Tehran has said that the charges are needed to pay for the reconstruction of Iran after attacks by the US and Israeli military.
Such an approach has been rejected by Trump while the International Maritime Organization says that such tolls would be illegal. That’s created an impasse that has so far contributed to traffic through the strait remaining at a fraction of pre-war levels.
“Nobody will allow tolls that are imposed in straits,” Procopiou said at the event, taking place during Greece’s biennial Posidonia gathering for the shipping industry. “The freedom of navigation is essential and nobody can impose tolls or any other burden because there are many chokepoints in the world.”
As well as Hormuz, there are a handful of other unavoidable waterways through which commercial shipping must pass, all of which come with freedom-of-navigation rights.
The Dynacom tankers’ journeys have underscored a few owners have been prepared to trade through even the most dangerous war zones.
