Loading ...US Energy Chief Says Hormuz Can Reopen Without Clearing All Mines, Warns Iran Shut-ins Could Be Devastating
US Energy Secretary Chris Wright said that not all mines placed by Iran in the Strait of Hormuz need to removed for ships to resume transiting the vital passageway: “You just need a pathway for ships to be moved in and out,” Wright said in an interview on the sidelines of the Three Seas Summit and Business Forum in Dubrovnik. “I think that can happen quickly” he added suggesting that a restart can happen far sooner than the full demining timeline. Fully clearing the strait of mines could take six months, a Pentagon official said during a classified Congressional briefing last week, the Washington Post reported.
Iran has said it laid mines along the most frequently used routes of the narrow waterway, which has been effectively closed since February 28, and through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil and gas transited before the US and Israel launched a war on the Islamic Republic.
Understandably, shipping companies have been highly reluctant to attempt to navigate Hormuz, fearing seizure, mines, and a lack of other safety guarantees.
Last but not least, the US energy secretary repeated verbatim what we said over the weekend, when we pointed out that a prolonged shut in would be devastating to Iran’s oil reservoirs as over half of them are low pressure “putting them at risk for permanent loss after shut-ins, via near-wellbore water emulsions, clay swelling, and water blockages.”
So why doesn’t the US simply announce guaranteed replacement value of ships & cargo to all shipping companies — it must be cheaper to risk having one of them blow up than to have the economy damaged by having hundreds of ships sitting idle????