A fully loaded Very Large Crude Carrier transiting the Strait of Hormuz today carries a bill that looks nothing like its January equivalent. The incremental cost above pre-crisis baseline, stacked across insurance, freight, transit fee, and delay, runs into the millions of dollars per voyage. None of that money funds a harbour authority, a pilotage service, a vessel traffic system, or a coordinated escort regime. It funds risk, rent, and delay. The shipping industry has been paying this bill for two months. The numbers are public. The implications are not.
Here is what the stack actually looks like, line by line, for a representative VLCC on the Middle East to Asia route.
War risk insurance
Hull war-risk premiums on Persian Gulf transits have risen from roughly 0.125 percent of hull value at the start of 2026 to 1 percent of hull value, renewable every seven days. Lloyd’s List, the Strauss Center, and the Insurance Journal have all documented the progression. For a VLCC carrying an insured hull value of roughly one hundred million dollars, that single premium line now prices at around one million dollars per seven-day coverage window. Some underwriters declined to write the route at any price during parts of March, and state-backed war-risk facilities stepped in as insurer of last resort in several European jurisdictions.
Spot freight rate uplift
VLCC day rates on the benchmark Middle East to China route hit 423,736 dollars per day in late March, a level without precedent in Baltic Exchange data going back to 2005. Maritime Executive described it as a sky-high record. Splash247 reported separate spot fixtures above the half-million-dollar mark. The pre-crisis baseline, for context, had typically been in the 80,000 to 150,000 dollar per day range. Even with rates easing from their March peaks, current levels sit at roughly three to four times pre-crisis norms. A twenty-day round voyage at current rates adds four to six million dollars of freight cost above baseline. That is money paid by the charterer, which is typically a refiner, which passes it onward to the fuel consumer.
IRGC transit toll
As documented this month by Chainalysis and TRM Labs, ship operators willing to transit under the Iranian-administered protocol pay roughly one US dollar per barrel carried. A fully loaded VLCC at roughly two million barrels pays close to two million dollars per transit, most commonly settled in Tether USDT on the Tron blockchain. This is the only line item in the stack that goes directly to the IRGC, and it is the only line item the shipowner can in principle decline to pay — at the cost of forgoing transit or facing the kinetic consequences of entering without clearance.
Demurrage and scheduling delay
Vessels awaiting IRGC clearance, mine-clearance progression, or US Navy blockade screening have experienced waiting times of multiple days outside the strait entrance. At current spot-equivalent idle cost, every day of waiting adds roughly three hundred to four hundred thousand dollars per vessel. Blockade-related delays on return voyages from Iranian ports are now a separate line on CENTCOM’s thirty-one-vessel turnaround tally. A conservative estimate of delay-attributable cost for a single Hormuz-exposed transit is five hundred thousand to one million dollars.
Protection and indemnity, crew hazard, cargo insurance
P and I cover, cargo insurance on high-value parcels, and crew hazard allowances have all repriced upward since February. The compounded additional cost on these items runs three hundred to five hundred thousand dollars for a representative VLCC voyage, depending on the flag state, the beneficial-owner nationality, and the negotiating leverage of the charterer.
The total, and who it funds
Stacked together, the incremental cost of a fully loaded VLCC voyage through Hormuz today sits in a band of roughly six to ten million US dollars above the January baseline. The exact figure depends on the voyage length, the specific insurance arrangements, and whether the operator pays the IRGC toll or attempts transit without payment and absorbs the corresponding risk by other means.
Of that total, essentially none funds institutional service. The war-risk premium pays underwriters for assuming risk. The freight rate uplift pays shipowners for assuming risk and for compensating trapped capacity elsewhere in the fleet. The IRGC toll pays a sanctioned non-state military actor. The demurrage compensates for system dysfunction. The P and I and hazard uplifts pay for crew liability and compensation.
Not one dollar of this stack pays for pilotage, vessel traffic coordination, mine-clearance services, escort capacity, a published rule book, or an auditable treasury. A Suez Canal transit by an equivalent VLCC costs roughly eight hundred thousand dollars and includes all of those services. That is less than the IRGC toll line alone, and it is roughly one-tenth of the total Hormuz stack.
The policy implication
The shipping industry, the refining sector, and the consumer downstream have been absorbing six to ten million dollars per VLCC Hormuz transit for two months. Cumulatively across the tonnage that has moved in trickles, the bill is in the billions. That money has produced no institutional output.
A legitimate multilateral chokepoint authority modelled on the Suez and Panama precedents could charge a fee of four to six hundred thousand dollars per VLCC transit. The site’s rate schedule proposes exactly this structure. Even if every transit paid the legitimate fee at the higher end, the total charge would be less than the current IRGC toll line on its own, and it would fund the full suite of institutional services that currently do not exist at Hormuz. The calculator lets any user price their own fleet against that schedule.
The fundamental argument here is not moral. It is economic. Every party paying the current cost stack is paying more to receive less. The actors who benefit are those collecting rent on crisis: war-risk underwriters, the IRGC, and shipowners whose spot freight is riding historic highs. The charterers, refiners, and consumers who pay the bill are subsidising the absence of a functioning transit regime. The longer the institutional vacuum persists, the longer that subsidy runs.
Sources: Lloyd’s List on Gulf war-risk premium ranges and VLCC spot rates; Maritime Executive on the 423,736 dollar per day Middle East to China rate record; Splash247 on half-million-dollar spot fixtures; Insurance Journal on hull war-risk progression; Strauss Center insurance market brief; CNBC on insurer withdrawal in early March; CENTCOM and ABC News on the thirty-one-vessel blockade turnaround; Chainalysis (10 April 2026) and TRM Labs (8 April 2026) on the one-dollar-per-barrel IRGC toll settled predominantly in USDT on Tron; Suez Canal Authority published tolls for comparative VLCC reference; Maritime Hub and Breakbulk on April market conditions.