Hundreds of ships are waiting outside the Ormuz Strait. Shipowners face a new problem

When talking about the crisis around the Ormuz Strait, attention usually focuses on oil prices, LNG supplies and tensions between Iran and the West. Meanwhile, in the Persian Gulf the problem is growing much less spectacular, but very expensive for world shipping.

For shipowners, this means not only lost revenues and delays in schedules. A long-term stop is also beginning to generate technical problems that would normally not attract more attention. One of them is the hull disfigurement, especially fast in the warm and salty waters of the Persian Gulf.

Floating oil storage facilities

After the war started with Iran and blocked this trail part of tankers She became a floating oil warehouse. When exports of raw material from the region were limited, producers began to use units standing on reds and anchors to temporarily store cargo.

This solution has avoided a sharp reduction in mining, but new problems have begun to arise with each week that are much less frequently spoken of. The point is that the ships were not designed to stop for months in one place. The sea is not a warehouse, even if it may serve for a time.

This does not mean going back to normal.

In recent days, signals have appeared showing a partial revival of movement by the Ormuz Strait. Single tankers and gas tankers began to cross the trail again, which may suggest that some shipowners carefully check the possibility of returning to regular shipping.

However, this does not change the basic picture of the situation. There are still numerous ships in the Gulf area awaiting safe passage through the Ormuz Strait, and traffic remains far from pre-crisis levels.

And it's this long-term inactivity that starts to create a problem that's not seen in oil quotes, but it's very good to see it on hulls of ships.

Warm water works faster than the shipowners assumed

The waters of the Persian Gulf are among the warmest and most salty waters used by world shipping. These conditions promote the intensive development of marine organisms.

On the hulls of ships, algae, clams, buds and other marine organisms begin to settle. The process itself is well known to shipowners. Under normal conditions, its pace limits the day-to-day operation of units, regular port passages and periodic cleaning and restoration of anti-fouling coatings.

However, the current situation is different from normal operation. Some units remain on reds and anchors for a long time, and limited traffic promotes faster hull growth. In the warm and salty waters of the Persian Gulf, this problem may increase faster than in many other waters.

Small layer, additional costs

At first glance, the biological damage to the hull does not seem to be the most important result of the shipping crisis. In practice, even the deterioration of the underwater condition of the hull part increases hydrodynamic resistance, which means higher fuel consumption and higher operating costs.

This mechanism is well known to shipowners. Hapag-Lloyd had already reported that the cleaning of the hulls of 33 container ships allowed to reduce energy consumption by 9%. The problem, therefore, is not just about aesthetics or maintenance, but about real fuel costs and ship efficiency.

It's just like a car that's been out of use for weeks. It does not lose its efficiency immediately, but the stop starts to reflect on subsequent operating elements. In the case of vessels that stand long in the warm waters of the Persian Gulf, one of these problems may be the faster warping of the hull.

Therefore, shipowners The problem of biological hull growth quickly becomes a financial problem.

Trouble may yet come

Interestingly, the most difficult moment can only occur when the situation around the Ormuz begins to return to normal.

With the re-launch of regular crossings, some of the waiting units will go on world routes. However, along with them, marine organisms that developed on hulls in the Persian Gulf for many weeks may be transferred.

For marine biologists, this means the risk of alien species spreading in other parts of the world. This problem has remained one of the challenges of global shipping for years, and the current crisis may further increase its scale.

A small detail showing the scale of the crisis

The history of growing hulls shows how much the character of modern marine crises has changed.

The blockade or restriction of traffic by the Ormuz Strait no longer only affects fuel prices and exchange quotations. It also affects shipowners, the technical state of the commercial fleet and the environment.

It is these seemingly secondary consequences that often best show the real scale of the problem. Because a ship that doesn't sail still costs money. And with each next week's stop it costs More and more.