Originally Posted by
rickair7777
On Day Zero, it doesn't take much at all... underwriters get spooked, ships drop anchor.
But the system will adapt, one way or another, if this drags out. They're already talking about it in the biz media...
https://europeanbusinessmagazine.com...-critical-oil/
It doesn't take much to spook insurers who are risk averse, and also averse to hard-to-quantify risk.
It takes a lot more to actually physically interdict a relevant % of shipping... we did it to the IR Navy, but of course we have multiple CSG's, surface combatants, subs, and numerous land-based tacair in theater.
An interesting excerpt from your above reference:
What This Means for Britain — and Europe
For the UK, the implications are uncomfortable. Lloyd’s withdrawal was not an act of strategic calculation — it was a risk management decision made under acute commercial pressure. But the consequence is a permanent reduction in British financial infrastructure’s role in the most strategically important shipping corridor on earth.
The long-term consequences for European financial influence in global energy markets are significant and largely unexamined in the current coverage of the conflict.
Europe, which imports a substantial proportion of its energy through Gulf routes, now finds itself doubly dependent on American goodwill — for both the physical security of those routes and the financial infrastructure that makes commercial shipping through them viable. That dependency has always existed in military terms. It now exists in financial terms too.
The 300-year empire died in 48 hours. And the nation that replaced it did not fire a single additional shot to do it.
FAQ
Q: Why did Lloyd’s of London pull maritime insurance from Gulf shipping?Iran’s attacks on Gulf shipping caused maritime insurance rates to spike by 400% in a very short period, creating commercially unacceptable risk exposure for Lloyd’s underwriters. The withdrawal was a risk management decision rather than a strategic one — but its geopolitical consequences have been profound, opening a vacuum that American insurers and the US Navy moved to fill within 48 hours.
Q: What does America’s takeover of Gulf maritime insurance mean for global oil markets? America now controls both the physical escort corridor through the Strait of Hormuz and the financial infrastructure — insurance — that makes commercial oil shipping through it viable. This gives the United States structural leverage over the global energy supply chain that extends well beyond the current conflict. Nations that depend on Gulf energy imports are now operationally dependent on American financial and military infrastructure in a way that has no modern precedent.
The U.K. has - to a greater extent than the US - deindustrialized, and has largely filled the resulting vacuum with service industries, banking, finance, and insurance in particular. If they have truly lost that near-monopoly for good it’s going to have very serious implications for the economy of the U.K..