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Sarjak Container Lines warned on April 8, 2026, that the two-week ceasefire reopening the Strait of Hormuz leaves vessel operators facing a near impossible voyage math: a full round trip through the Gulf consumes every one of the 15 available days, with no buffer for port delays and no guarantee the corridor stays open once the clock runs out.
The advisory, issued from Mumbai by SCL Chairman and Managing Director Ashish Sheth, describes a maritime industry caught between a political breakthrough and an operational reality that has yet to catch up. Daily vessel transits through Hormuz have recovered to roughly nine per day, a fraction of the 130 to 140 movements that were routine before the conflict began on February 28.
A Managed Corridor, Not an Open One
The ceasefire, brokered by Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Field Marshal Asim Munir, produced a conditional reopening. Iran’s Foreign Ministry confirmed coordination through its armed forces for vessel transit, but Sheth described the waterway as functioning more like a managed corridor than a neutral passage.
Traffic data supports that assessment. At the height of the disruption, Hormuz movements fell to single digits daily. Even with the truce in place, throughput remains below 10 percent of the pre conflict norm.
The ceasefire window is set at two weeks. Negotiations scheduled for Friday, April 10, in Islamabad between US and Iranian delegations will determine whether the arrangement holds or collapses. Israel has not fully stood down, and missile alerts continued in both Israel and the UAE after the ceasefire announcement. Iran’s Supreme National Security Council accepted the truce while stating publicly that its forces remain on alert.
The 15-Day Trap: Voyage Math That Does Not Add Up
The most striking section of the SCL advisory lays out the arithmetic of a round trip through the Gulf under the current ceasefire window. A vessel entering Hormuz, proceeding to a discharge port such as Dammam, Jubail, or Khalifa, completing port operations, and returning to the Hormuz exit requires between 8 and 15 days at a minimum. Any berthing queue, documentation delay, or operational hold pushes the vessel past the ceasefire deadline while still inside what remains a declared war zone.
Sheth said shipowners who commit today are not just taking a transit risk but a post ceasefire entrapment risk, adding that this reality changes the commercial calculus entirely.
The entrapment scenario cascades across the supply chain. War risk underwriters are unlikely to cover a vessel that knowingly commits to a voyage exceeding the ceasefire window. Charterers and cargo owners face force majeure triggers and contractual penalties if a vessel cannot exit on schedule. Protection and indemnity clubs will scrutinize whether shipowners exercised reasonable due diligence given the known timeline. Crew safety obligations under the Maritime Labour Convention and the International Safety Management Code become acute if a vessel is caught inside the zone after the truce expires.
Insurance Holds the Key to Recovery Speed
War risk premiums for Hormuz area transits surged from 0.125 percent of hull value to between 0.2 and 0.4 percent per voyage when the conflict began, adding roughly a quarter of a million dollars per transit for very large crude carriers. The Joint War Committee of the London insurance market extended its high risk area listings to include waters around Oman. A temporary ceasefire does not automatically reset those underwriting positions, and until Islamabad produces a durable framework, premiums will remain elevated.
Sheth called insurance the real gatekeeper. As long as the region is priced as a war risk zone, large scale movement will remain constrained regardless of whether the Strait is technically open, he said.
India’s Dual Exposure: Energy Imports and Project Cargo at Risk
The advisory highlighted a dimension of the crisis that has received less attention. India is not only a major importer of crude oil and LNG through Hormuz. It is also a significant source of project execution for markets across the Middle East, Africa, and Southeast Asia. Indian manufacturers and EPC contractors supply refinery and petrochemical equipment, infrastructure modules, and critical rotating components on tight construction schedules. A single delayed shipment can cascade across entire project timelines.
Petroleum cargo accounts for nearly a third of total Indian port traffic. While Indian port volumes have remained stable so far, the SCL advisory warned that the lag between the upstream disruption and its impact on Indian shores is closing.
Outlook Hinges on Islamabad
The practical implication, according to SCL, is that only short haul, high priority cargo movements where the full voyage cycle can be completed with a meaningful buffer inside 15 days should be seriously considered. Longer voyages, complex multi-port calls, and vessels with uncertain turnaround times should hold.
There are early signs of operators shifting from containerized movement to breakbulk and multi-modal solutions, with greater reliance on flexible routing and increased planning buffers to absorb uncertainty. But Sheth cautioned that adaptation is not normalization, and that the willingness to move at scale depends entirely on how stable and predictable the corridor proves to be in the days ahead.
