$150,000 To Cross Hormuz? Why Tanker Captains Are Getting Record Pay Amid Iran Attacks

Oil tanker captains sailing through the Strait of Hormuz are being offered as much as $100,000 a month, plus a $50,000 bonus for every crossing, as shipowners pay extraordinary premiums to keep Gulf oil moving through a war zone.

The surge in pay comes as Iranian missile and drone attacks have made each voyage increasingly dangerous. Captains normally earn about $15,000 a month, while ordinary sailors can earn as little as $1,500. During Hormuz crossings, ordinary crew members can receive four to six times their usual wages.

Some sailors are also being offered as much as $25,000 per trip, while earlier offers included several months of additional salary for completing a round trip. But seafarers, many of them from India, the Philippines and Indonesia, say the money comes with an extraordinary personal risk. Some crew members have reportedly been pressured to sail or risk losing their jobs. One Indian union official said seafarers were effectively being forced to choose between their livelihoods and their lives.

The wider cost of moving Gulf crude has also exploded. Tanker freight rates have reached about $1.3 million a day, compared with 50,000 last year. A typical very large crude carrier can transport around 2 million barrels and carry up to 35 crew members.

Shipowners are increasingly using shuttle operations, in which tankers load oil inside the Gulf and transfer it to other vessels near Fujairah in the Gulf of Oman. Such voyages can generate freight charges of up to $40 million, while reducing the need for buyers' vessels to enter the danger zone.

War-risk insurance now costs 6-10 per cent of a ship's hull value, potentially reaching $20 million for a supertanker. Fuel oil at Fujairah has risen 67 per cent year-on-year to $686 a tonne.

Traffic through Hormuz has plunged, with only 13 vessels recorded on 4 October against roughly 135 a day before the conflict. Yet oil exports have not collapsed. September Middle East exports averaged 18.3 million barrels per day, above pre-war levels on several days, as producers used pipelines and ship-to-ship transfers to maintain supplies.

Companies including Sinokor, Dynacom, Adnoc and Kuwait Oil Tanker Company continue operating through the crisis. But alternative routes have limited capacity, leaving Hormuz indispensable and making every additional attack potentially more costly for global oil markets.