This Week in Maritime: freight takes a quarter of the barrel

The Baltic Exchange's Middle East Gulf to China VLCC route reached $1.2125m a day on 17 September, about ten times what it paid before the conflict began in February. A US Gulf cargo to Asia now costs about $52m more to move, and Vortexa data already shows crude flows between the Americas and Asia turning down. One Japanese refiner bought Alaskan crude it was not built to run, because the voyage was short.

**A 26-year-old wiper was killed on the CAPE DAO, IMO 9219020.** Two projectiles hit the 2002-built capesize off Musandam on 23 September, one in the accommodation and one near the engine room. Suraj Yadav, from Deoria in Uttar Pradesh, died. Oman's navy took off the other 27. It was the third strike on merchant shipping in the strait in three days: the crude tanker LR STEPHANIE, IMO 9282625, was hit on 21 September with two crew injured, and the LPG carrier AL MARYAH, IMO 9393682, was struck by debris on her way out. The IMO had counted 23 seafarer deaths in and around the strait before this one.

**The MSC HERMES III, IMO 9350317, is a derelict.** All 25 crew abandoned the 2,490 teu feeder in the South China Sea on 22 September and were picked out of their lifeboat by the MSC RUBY, IMO 9502960. A navigational warning now lists the ship as adrift and unmanned about 300 km east of Vietnam. Nobody has said why they left her.

That was 121.06m dwt, up 173.1% on a year earlier. CSSC alone booked 22.45m dwt, and Hengli took 207 ships against 115 in the whole of 2025.

Jan De Nul ordered a second trenching support vessel, taking its cable fleet to fourteen, while the new layer FLEEMING JENKIN, IMO 1035466, finished her first sea trials. In Korea, LS Marine Solution booked a cable contract worth 2.2 times its annual revenue, the first job in an 8.2 GW wind belt.

A procession from Fakirhat on 27 September targets the $205m concession of the New Mooring Container Terminal to DP World, and their list of demands goes well beyond the deal.