Oil and LNG tankers leave Strait of Hormuz after long blockade - media

LNG tankers and a supertanker carrying Iraqi crude oil have left the Strait of Hormuz and are heading to Pakistan and China after nearly three months of forced inactivity.

It was reported by Ekonomichna Pravda, citing Reuters.

The US-Israeli war against Iran, which began on February 28, restricted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, through which about one-fifth of global oil and LNG supplies usually pass.

The report states that the LNG tanker Fuwairit, flying the flag of the Bahamas, crossed the Strait of Hormuz on Monday.

The vessel was loaded at the Qatari port of Ras Laffan in late March and is expected to unload in Pakistan on May 26.

Another gas carrier, the Al Rayyan, also successfully exited the strait and is heading to China, where it is scheduled to dock in late June.

On Saturday, the supertanker Eagle Verona also left the strait; it is scheduled to arrive at the port of Ningbo in eastern China on June 12.

The Singapore-flagged vessel is chartered by Unipec, the trading arm of Sinopec, Asia’s largest oil refining company.

The tanker loaded about 2 million barrels of Iraqi Basrah crude oil on February 26.

It is noted that the tanker Eagle Verona was among seven vessels for which Malaysia requested transit permission from Iran. Since then, five of these vessels have left the waterway, while two remain in the Persian Gulf.

Before the war began, shipping traffic through the strait averaged between 125 and 140 vessel passages per day.

Currently, about 20,000 sailors remain stranded in the Persian Gulf aboard hundreds of ships.

As the Ukrainian News agency earlier reported, last week three very large crude carriers (VLCCs) also left the Persian Gulf and headed for China and South Korea with 6 million barrels of crude oil.

Global oil prices fell to their lowest level in the past two weeks amid reports of a possible deal between the US and Iran.