A round trip through the Strait of Hormuz to pick up oil from Saudi Arabia or Iraq and deliver it to the Gulf of Oman takes about a month. That month just became extremely profitable for the crews who agree to make the trip.
If you're a captain earning up to $15,000 a month, you would get six months of extra salary on top of your normal pay. Even a junior sailor, or rating, who normally makes about $1,500 a month would get six months of extra salary for a single month of work. Other firms offer 60 days of extra pay for a 30-day contract; Sinokor's offer triples that.
Why the massive incentive? Because the waterway has become a war zone. Last week alone saw at least two deaths, and another ship was abandoned on Monday.
You cannot move oil without people to steer the ships. And increasingly, those people do not want to go.
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"We have heard stories of a large number of crew members getting off, but they are able to find people who are willing to go," Chawla told reporters.
That willingness is being tested. The risk is not abstract. Every ship that passes through the Strait of Hormuz is a potential target.
Some vessels have started turning off their satellite signals, a tactic called "going dark," to try to slip through undetected. It is hard to say how much traffic is still moving that way, but the visible number of ships has dropped in recent days.
Sinokor has backing from MSC Mediterranean Shipping Co SA, a private company that helped build its supertanker fleet. That means the offer is not coming from a small operator taking a gamble. It is coming from the biggest player in the business, which suggests the danger is serious and the payoff needs to be massive to get anyone to sign on.
The Strait of Hormuz is the world's most important oil chokepoint. Roughly one-fifth of all the oil the planet burns passes through it every day. When that route becomes risky, the price of oil gets jumpy. And when the price of oil gets jumpy, a lot of things in your portfolio move with it.
So far, oil prices have already climbed as the attacks piled up. But the real question is about supply. If crews keep refusing to sail - even with six months of pay on the line - then fewer tankers are going to make it through. That means less oil hitting the global market, which pushes prices higher for everyone.
The bottom line: You do not need to own an oil tanker to feel the effects. The shipping bonuses are a signal that the Strait of Hormuz is not business as usual. Every extra dollar Sinokor pays a captain is a sign that the market is pricing in higher risk. And higher risk in the Strait usually shows up as higher fuel costs for your car, higher shipping costs for the stuff you buy, and more volatility in the energy stocks you may own.
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