Welcome to Captain Phillips' Nightmare

Key points

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  Somali pirates are active again with at least three ships being attacked.

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  This is a direct outcome of the Iran war.

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  The trade of Hormuz is offline.

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  Roughly three quarters of a billion barrels of crude haven't made it to the market.

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  That's roughly equivalent to 10 to 15% of global supply is just gone, probably not coming back.

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  The United States has its largest concentration of naval forces in the area really in the history of the region.

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  Countries that might be a little hostile to the United States, say China, they're not going to put any of their naval vessels in the region.

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  The oil shortages means that more conventional navies can't actually get the fuel to keep their economies running.

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  The idea of doing a long-range projection force into a war zone to fight pirates, no.

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  As this ramps up, not only is the Strait of Hormuz a no-go zone, the Red Sea will once again become a no-go zone.

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  That will also hit energy prices because a lot of stuff is currently being exported through the Red Sea and then up through Suez.

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  Those ships simply can't sail the distances necessary to get them all the way around Africa.

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