by Manal Barakat, SeaNewsEditor
5 December 2024 (Lloyd's List) - GEOPOLITCIAL risk is the biggest threat to shipping over the next two years, according to the Lloyd’s List Outlook poll.
Lloyd’s List has surveyed the industry for the past few weeks to take the temperature on some of the biggest issues facing shipping.
The results were revealed at the Lloyd’s List Outlook Forum at Trinity House, in the shadow of the Tower of London.
Some 47% of respondents said geopolitical risk was the greatest risk to shipping over the next two years, perhaps unsurprisingly, as the sector grapples with a world fracturing into distinct trading blocs.
That figure was surpassed by respondents in Trinity House itself, where nearly 60% of the audience opted for geopolitical risk when polled live.
In the same poll, 37% of respondents said they thought the Red Sea would not open fully to shipping until 2026.
More pollees said they thought it would open later than 2027 than in 2025. Again, the mood in London was even more pessimistic, with 41% of those in the room opting for a reopening date later than 2027.
But Trafigura’s global head of shipping Andrea Olivi said Suez Canal transits would resume in 2025, citing an incoming US regime that he said would likely take a more aggressive approach to the issue.
Second on shipping’s worry list was the growth of the dark fleet, with 16% of respondents to Lloyd’s List’s poll naming it as the biggest risk to shipping over the next two years, equalled by growing protectionism and tariffs (also 16%).
Olivi shared the concerns of many, including the Swedish foreign minister and Finnish Shipowners Association, when he said his biggest fear over the next two years was a major incident involving a dark fleet* tanker.
“We haven’t really done enough to stop this,” Olivi told the Outlook Forum. “We are playing with the safety of people on board these vessels.”
In the same vein, Lloyd’s Register chief executive Nick Brown said deglobalisation was one of the biggest threats to shipping.
The industry thrives on efficiency and access to ports across the globe, he said, something which is now back on the table after being guaranteed almost everywhere for so long.
Access to the seas has been taken for granted for so long, but it’s now shipping’s biggest worry, way ahead of missing the decarbonisation boat (just 12% said failure to introduce a carbon levy was the biggest risk).
Despite the attention on the decarbonisation debate, it’s the threat to freedom of navigation that is keeping Lloyd’s List subscribers up at night.
* Lloyd’s List defines a tanker as part of the dark fleet if it is aged 15 years or over, anonymously owned and/or has a corporate structure designed to obfuscate beneficial ownership discovery, solely deployed in sanctioned oil trades, and engaged in one or more of the deceptive shipping practices outlined in US State Department guidance issued in May 2020. The figures exclude tankers tracked to government-controlled shipping entities such as Russia’s Sovcomflot, or Iran’s National Iranian Tanker Co, and those already sanctioned.
