Two tankers turn away from Strait of Hormuz after US blockade begins
At least two tankers reversed course near the Strait of Hormuz shortly after the start of the US blockade, highlighting the immediate impact on vessel movements. According to #MarineTraffic data, the 188-metre tanker Rich Starry turned back within minutes of approaching the chokepoint. The vessel had departed Sharjah Anchorage on 13 April and was sailing laden, with a reported draught of 11.3 metres, while signalling China as its destination. A second vessel, the 175-metre tanker Ostria, also reversed course after approaching the Strait.
https://x.com/MarineTraffic/status/2043739534228169042
Posted by MasterRazz
12 Comments
So it begins
If China wanted their oil, they should have pressured Iran to open the strait months ago. Shart of the deal!
Aaaand oil keeps going down 🤡
Reddit told me this would NEVER happen. China will do absolutely nothing. They have no way to project any power to the Middle East.
A 36K and a 40K ton refined products tanker? Nothing burger.
China is a paper tiger
Im sure this wont piss China off at all 🙂
Kinda shocked they would turn around.
China now has incentive to start pressuring Iran
Ok. What’s the strategy here? Does Trump think Iran will relinquish control of the strait by doing this?.
I was just on another thread in this sub and everyone was saying the US couldn’t blockade and that they would never turn a Chinese tanker around. Weird.
China’s energy mix makes it much less vulnerable to Trump’s Hormuz blockade than a lot of commentary implies – but not for the reasons most people assume.
Roughly 60% of China’s *total* energy still comes from coal, not oil. At the same time, the bulk of *incremental* electricity demand is now being met by new solar and wind capacity layered on top of a coal‑heavy baseload. That means China’s electric grid and core industrial power supply are overwhelmingly insulated from any disruption in seaborne oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz.
That radically changes the nature of China’s vulnerability. The issue is **not** “will China run out of energy?” It’s “which parts of the economy get squeezed when oil prices spike or specific flows are cut?” Oil is a minority share of China’s primary energy, but it is concentrated in transport, aviation, shipping, and petrochemicals. Those are precisely the sectors that feel a Hormuz shock: higher diesel and bunker fuel costs, more expensive jet fuel, and tighter margins for chemicals and refined‑product exporters. Losing steeply discounted Iranian barrels makes this worse, because China has to replace cheap crude with higher‑priced alternatives, even if total barrel volumes remain adequate.
On top of that, China has a built‑in shock absorber: Russia. In 2024, Russia became China’s largest crude supplier at a bit over 2 mb/d, mainly via pipelines and Pacific routes that don’t go anywhere near Hormuz. That doesn’t eliminate the pain of losing ultra‑cheap Iranian barrels or of a global price spike, but it does mean the constraint is about *cost and sectoral stress* rather than whether China can physically find replacement crude.
Meanwhile, the coal‑plus‑solar structure gives Beijing room to absorb some of the blow. Domestic coal and rapidly growing renewables keep the power system running and industrial electricity prices relatively stable, even if imported oil gets more expensive. That means the shock shows up as a terms‑of‑trade hit, margin compression in oil‑intensive sectors, and potential drag on growth – not as blackouts or a generalized “energy crisis” inside China.
In short: China’s dependence on coal, its explosive solar build‑out, and large‑scale Russian imports narrow the impact channel of a Hormuz blockade. The vulnerability is sectoral and price‑driven, not a systemic shortage of energy.