US President Donald Trump warned Tehran not to charge tolls on ships crossing the Strait of Hormuz, as a mounting global energy crisis prompted Japan on Friday to announce a further emergency oil release, Reuters reported.
The Iran war has damaged Gulf energy production, stranded tanker traffic, and boosted oil prices by about 50% in the world’s worst energy shock, with Asian buyers among the hardest hit.
“There are reports that Iran is charging fees to tankers going through the Hormuz Strait,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “They better not be and, if they are, they better stop now.”
“That is not the agreement we have!,” Trump said.
Opening the strait at the southern tip of the Gulf to free hundreds of stranded tankers and other vessels was a condition of the two-week ceasefire announced on April 7 after weeks of attacks that have damaged energy infrastructure across the Gulf.
A spokesperson for Iran’s Oil, Gas and Petrochemical Products Exporters’ Union, Hamid Hosseini, had told the Financial Times newspaper that Iran would demand tolls in cryptocurrency during the ceasefire.
On Thursday, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps also set forth a special route for vessels to follow, warning them to sail through Iranian waters around Larak Island to avoid the risk of naval mines in the usual lanes through the strait, Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency reported.
The conflict has had a global impact well beyond Gulf economies and tourism, with inflationary energy price rises and damage to supply of liquefied natural gas and aluminium, cooking gas for India, helium for Asia’s chipmakers, diesel for farmers, and jet fuel for airlines.
Japan plans to release an additional 20 days’ worth of oil reserves from May, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi told a cabinet meeting on Friday.
Japan is dependent on the Gulf for some 95% of its oil. Takaichi said by May the country should be able to secure more than half of its imports via routes that bypass the Strait of Hormuz, without providing details.
With the Gulf effectively shut, Saudi Arabia is managing to export via the Red Sea port of Yanbu. Japan in May is also set to receive four times the U.S. crude it did a year earlier, a trade and economy ministry document showed on Friday.
