Trump wants Navy escorts for tankers in the Gulf. Why it may not work

President Donald Trump is ready to use the US Navy to escort oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz as the war against Iran intensifies, but providing safe passage for the volume of traffic that usually passes through the waterway will be difficult.

US oil prices rose 28% this week to over $86 a barrel as Iran attacked tankers and ship traffic in the Bosphorus came to a virtual halt. Brent crude oil rose 22% this week to $89 per barrel.

Wall Street analysts say global benchmark Brent could rise above $100 a barrel if the waterway remains closed for an extended period of time. It is stated that oil prices at this level could drag the global economy into recession.

The narrow strait is the only way for tankers to enter and exit the Persian Gulf. According to energy consultancy firm Kpler, more than 14 million barrels of crude oil passed through the Bosphorus per day in 2025; This is approximately one-third of the oil exported by ship worldwide.

100 per day

Kpler oil analyst Matt Smith said that under normal conditions, approximately 100 tankers and cargo ships pass through the Bosphorus every day, and currently approximately 400 tankers are stranded in the Gulf due to the war.

“There are still hundreds of ships in the Middle East Gulf,” said senior cargo analyst Matt Wright, also of Kpler. The US Navy “will take an inordinate amount of time to escort even a few people at a time.”

Trump’s promises to escort tankers if necessary and provide political risk insurance to their owners helped calm the oil market on Tuesday and Wednesday.

However, prices rose on Thursday after Iran announced that it attacked a tanker with a missile. Meanwhile, the British Navy reported that a large explosion occurred on a tanker anchored in Iraqi territorial waters.

Enough ship

“The key question will be whether there are sufficient Navy assets to both escort ships and sustain operations against Iran,” Helima Croft, head of global commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets, told clients in a note Tuesday.

Kpler’s Wright said insurance was not the main issue for ship owners. He said that the tankers did not move because they were worried about their physical safety and that the ship owners would need a long period without attacks to pass through the Bosphorus again.

Wright said the urgency of restoring oil flows from the Gulf is high. But “there needs to be some confidence that Iran’s ability to continue the war is diminishing,” the analyst said.

Houthi militants in Yemen disrupted Red Sea traffic with missile attacks for more than a year, starting in late 2023. “They’re nothing compared to the sophistication of the Iranians, so they’re a very different threat,” Wright said.

U.S. Navy escorts are assisting at the border but will not reopen the Strait alone, Rapidan Energy analysts said in a note Wednesday. Instead, they said, the United States should systematically reduce Iran’s military capabilities, and that this would take time.

1980s war

Croft said that when commercial ships became targets during the Iran-Iraq war in 1987, the US Navy accompanied tankers while passing through the Bosphorus. However, he said that at that time, the US military was both waging war against the regime in Tehran and did not guarantee safe passage to the ships.

The Trump administration will provide naval escorts “as soon as possible,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said Wednesday.

“Right now our Navy and military are focused on other things that are disarming the Iranian regime, which is attacking all of its neighbors and Americans in every way possible,” Wright said. he said. Fox News.

“In the not-too-distant future, we will be able to use the Navy to restore the flow of energy, but in the meantime the markets remain very well supplied,” he said.

No timeline

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Wednesday that the Trump administration does not have a timeline for when the Strait will be safe again for commercial shipping.

“I don’t want to commit to a timeline, but this is certainly something that is being actively calculated by both the War Department and the Department of Energy,” Leavitt said during a briefing. he said.

According to analysts, the longer tankers are kept in the Gulf, the bigger the problem for the global oil market.

Natasha Kaneva, head of global commodity research at JPMorgan, said Gulf countries could run out of storage capacity because the barrels have nowhere to go. This would force them to halt production, potentially pushing Brent to $120 a barrel, Kaneva said in a note on Sunday.

Iraqi officials he told Reuters On Tuesday, it was reported that Iraq had reduced production by 1.5 million barrels per day as its storage ran out due to the closure of Hormuz. Production cuts could double within four days, Kaneva said Tuesday.

“The clock is ticking as the Strait of Hormuz is still inactive,” said Kaneva.