00:00Bloomberg Oil Markets reporter Mia Gendis joins us now for more. Mia, what has been the state of the flow
00:06getting out of the Strait of Hormuz and how big of a difference will it now make with the foreign
00:09minister saying that, yes, for commercial vehicles, it's open?
00:12So as of lately, the flow through the Strait of Hormuz has still been extremely minimal, right? So back in
00:17the day before the war, we used to see around 135 ships per day transiting through the Hormuz. Now the
00:24levels are usually less than 10.
00:26The truth of the matter is, even though this is a positive development toward a longer term opening of the
00:32Hormuz, it's not going to mean much just yet, right?
00:35We're still having a lot of disagreements between ship owners and charters about who takes the risk as far as
00:41transiting the Hormuz.
00:43We don't know how safe the Hormuz actually is. There's some feelings that perhaps Iran has placed minds there.
00:50We don't know the extent of what's true or what's not at this point.
00:57We need to see a confidence among insurance companies to actually be able to extend insurances to ships that are
01:05transiting through.
01:06So in the short term, we probably won't see an immediate uptick in flows, but it's definitely a step in
01:13the right direction.
01:14The market taking it as a big step in the right direction. WTI is now at $85. Brent is at
01:20$90.
01:21A lot, though, Mia, has been discussed that even if the strait were to reopen, even if the conflict were
01:26to end, there are still scars to the energy infrastructure.
01:29With oil at $85 a barrel for WTI and $90 for Brent, is that being priced in?
01:34So at this point, it is still being priced in, but there's definitely more of a feeling in the physical
01:40market rather than the paper market about the long-lasting scars that this war has caused.
01:45So we will probably still see a premium, like I said, via insurances flow down into the price that it
01:52takes to carry freight throughout the world.
01:55Likely, Asian buyers are not going to want to turn back to the Persian Gulf so quickly.
02:02They've seen what it means to rely on one source of energy, and at this point, they'll probably want to
02:08diversify.
02:08And those longer hauls are going to also translate into higher prices for carrying that freight.
02:15It won't be as quick of a recovery, I think, as a lot of people, at least speculators in the
02:21paper market, are assuming.
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