An Open Strait of Hormuz Won’t Fix Gas Prices Overnight

霍尔木兹海峡重开，油价难言一夜回落

On Wednesday evening, President Donald Trump officially signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Iran, a deal that sets off a 60-day ceasefire and longer-term nuclear talks between the two nations. It also, critically, reopens the Strait of Hormuz, that narrow waterway between Iran and Oman that usually serves as one of the globe’s vital energy shipping routes, with 20 million barrels of oil moving through daily.

周三晚间，唐纳德·特朗普总统正式与伊朗签署了一份谅解备忘录。该协议开启了为期60天的停火期，并启动了两国之间长期的核谈判。至关重要的是，它还重新开放了霍尔木兹海峡——这条位于伊朗和阿曼之间的狭窄水道，通常是全球最重要的能源运输航线之一，每天有2000万桶石油经此运输。

By Thursday morning, 10 vessels that had been stranded for all 110 days of the US-Iran war began moving out of the area, according to Windward, a maritime intelligence firm. The Strait of Hormuz seems open for business.

据海事情报公司Windward称，截至周四上午，在美伊战争期间被困了整整110天的10艘船只已开始驶离该区域。霍尔木兹海峡似乎已恢复通航。

But experts say that US consumers shouldn’t expect gas prices—which have jumped more than 35 percent nationally since late February—to recover soon. Shippers are still nervous about the tenuous peace in the Strait, which remains seeded with an indeterminate number of underwater mines. It doesn’t help that Trump continues to threaten violence in the area. “We will bomb them” if Iran doesn’t permanently shut down its nuclear program, the president told reporters Wednesday. “It’s amazing what bombs can do.” Meanwhile, the machinery of oil production is only just grinding back to a start.

但专家表示，美国消费者不应指望汽油价格会很快回落（自2月下旬以来，美国全国汽油价格已上涨超过35%）。航运商对海峡内脆弱的和平局势仍感到不安，因为海峡中仍布有数量不明的水雷。特朗普继续在该地区发出暴力威胁，这无济于事。总统周三对记者表示，如果伊朗不永久关闭其核计划，“我们将轰炸他们”，“炸弹的威力令人惊叹”。与此同时，石油生产机器才刚刚开始缓慢重启。

“For the consumer, the big thing to realize is that there’s no sign that prices are heading back to February levels just yet,” says Jason Miller, a professor of supply chain management at Michigan State University’s Eli Broad College of Business. “The global oil supply-demand balance, big picture, has been incredibly disrupted.” Right now, he says, people who buy gas, food, fertilizer, and anything else dependent on oil-based products shouldn’t count on a rapid recovery.

密歇根州立大学埃利·布罗德商学院供应链管理教授杰森·米勒（Jason Miller）表示：“对于消费者来说，最重要的一点是，目前没有任何迹象表明价格会回落到2月份的水平。从大局来看，全球石油供需平衡已被严重破坏。”他指出，目前购买汽油、食品、化肥以及任何依赖石油产品的人，都不应指望价格会迅速恢复。

Though crude oil prices have fallen since the memorandum’s announcement, consumers would be wise to budget for the higher wartime prices for the longer haul. “This is an incredibly fragile situation,” Miller says. “None of these things would have happened if you had not had the war.”

尽管自备忘录宣布以来原油价格有所下跌，但消费者明智的做法是为长期的战时高价做好预算。米勒说：“这是一个极其脆弱的局面。如果不是因为这场战争，这一切都不会发生。”

The Shipping News

航运动态

Jakob Larsen, the chief safety and security officer at BIMCO, the world’s largest international shipping organization, said in a written statement Thursday that the industry still views the Strait as a safety risk for vessels. Its central part is “mined and un-navigable,” he wrote, which means ships’ safest routes right now are likely in narrower channels closer to Iran or Oman. The memorandum did not include important details that will determine how the next weeks and months will look, shipping-wise: which routes are safest, how and when ships might move in opposite directions, whether militaries will get involved with standard operations, or whether Iran might impose tolls.

全球最大的国际航运组织BIMCO的首席安全官雅各布·拉森（Jakob Larsen）周四在一份书面声明中表示，航运业仍将该海峡视为船只的安全风险区。他写道，海峡中部“布满水雷且无法航行”，这意味着目前船只最安全的航线可能是在靠近伊朗或阿曼的狭窄水道。该备忘录未包含决定未来数周和数月航运情况的重要细节，例如：哪些航线最安全、船只如何以及何时进行对向航行、军方是否会介入常规作业，或者伊朗是否会征收过路费。

“We advise shipowners to continue doing thorough risk assessments and appeal to all parties to put the safety of seafarers first,” Larsen wrote. “Credible assurances from both sides of the conflict must be given before traffic can resume fully to pre-conflict levels.”

拉森写道：“我们建议船东继续进行彻底的风险评估，并呼吁各方将海员的安全放在首位。在交通完全恢复到冲突前水平之前，冲突双方必须提供可信的保证。”

Part of the issue is that no one knows exactly how long it will take to make the Strait safe enough for shippers and their insurers. Routes “have got to be de-mined,” says Michelle Wiese Bockmann, a senior maritime intelligence analyst at Windward, and “nobody knows how long that will take—six weeks or six months.” Earlier this week, Trump said the effort to clear mines is already underway. The effort could include several countries, minesweeping ships, underwater drones that use sonar emitters to locate seafloor anomalies, military divers, and even US Navy-trained mine-detecting dolphins (though CNN reported last month that dolphins are unlikely to be currently operating in the area).

问题的一部分在于，没有人确切知道需要多长时间才能使海峡对航运商及其保险公司来说足够安全。Windward的高级海事情报分析师米歇尔·维泽·博克曼（Michelle Wiese Bockmann）表示，航线“必须进行扫雷”，而且“没人知道这需要多久——可能是六周，也可能是六个月”。本周早些时候，特朗普表示扫雷工作已经开始。这项工作可能涉及多个国家、扫雷舰、利用声纳发射器定位海底异常的水下无人机、军事潜水员，甚至美国海军训练的探雷海豚（尽管CNN上个月报道称，海豚目前不太可能在该地区作业）。

The war may have permanently transformed global shipping, now that Iran understands it can shut down the strait, albeit at some cost. A critical open question is whether the country will be permitted to toll ships passing through the strait, a possibility that’s been floated in recent weeks. Depending on the dollar amount, tolls could add extra operating costs—and for buyers, higher prices—to an already difficult maritime shipping situation. But it could also create a dangerous new model for a world that has for more than 30 years recognized the right of transit through natural straits.

这场战争可能已经永久性地改变了全球航运，因为伊朗现在明白它可以关闭海峡，尽管这需要付出一定代价。一个关键的悬而未决的问题是，伊朗是否会被允许对通过海峡的船只征收过路费，这一可能性在最近几周已被提出。根据金额的不同，过路费可能会增加额外的运营成本——对买家而言则是更高的价格——从而加剧本已困难的海运形势。但这也可能为世界创造一种危险的新模式，因为过去30多年来，世界一直承认通过天然海峡的通行权。

“It would be a very worrying precedent,” says Bockmann. If other countries are able to toll their waters—the Strait of Malacca, for example, which carries oil and natural gas from the Middle East to Asia and is sandwiched between Indonesia and Malaysia—“you can imagine what chaos would break out,” she says.

“这将是一个非常令人担忧的先例，”博克曼说。如果其他国家也能对其水域征收过路费——例如马六甲海峡，它承载着从中东到亚洲的石油和天然气，且位于印度尼西亚和马来西亚之间——“你可以想象会引发什么样的混乱，”她说。

Oil Trouble

石油困境

The particulars of the oil industry will also determine how much the average consumer will have to spend on everyday products in the months to come. Miller predicts “quite a bit of volatility in oil prices” because global inventories have dropped so low, and it’s not yet clear when interrupted production can restart in the region. While the big news right now is that ships are finally leaving the Persian Gulf, what matters in the coming weeks will be how many enter to load up with oil.

石油行业的具体情况也将决定普通消费者在未来几个月内必须为日常用品支付多少费用。米勒预测“油价将出现相当大的波动”，因为全球库存已降至极低水平，且目前尚不清楚该地区中断的生产何时能重启。虽然目前最大的新闻是船只终于开始离开波斯湾，但未来几周重要的是有多少船只进入波斯湾装载石油。

Petroleum-based products, like the plastic packaging used for many food products, will likely stay pricier for at least the next month or two, Miller says. “The best-case scenario is that the pace of inflation slows, but it’s a faster pace of inflation than where we were at before this war.”

米勒表示，石油基产品（如许多食品使用的塑料包装）在未来一两个月内可能会保持高价。“最好的情况是通胀速度放缓，但其通胀速度仍将快于战争爆发前的水平。”

The oil crunch has not been as dire as experts predicted months ago because of a few fortunate breaks. For one, the world happened to have ample global crude oil inventories when the war kicked off earlier this year. Also, China dramatically decreased its oil imports, which kept demand steadier despite the global volatility. Did the country draw down its significant reserves? Stop refining oil? Fill the gap with coal? Dive even further into electrification?

由于一些幸运的转机，石油危机并没有像专家几个月前预测的那样严重。首先，今年早些时候战争爆发时，全球恰好拥有充足的原油库存。此外，中国大幅减少了石油进口，这使得需求在全球波动中保持了相对稳定。中国是动用了其庞大的储备吗？停止了炼油？用煤炭填补了缺口？还是进一步推进了电气化？

China still isn’t providing much clarification into what measures it has taken, though global stats suggest the reserves and reducing refining was at least part of the [equation].