Shipowners are offering crews higher pay amid attacks and shipping risks, the Financial Times reports. Captains are also being offered bonuses of up to $50,000 for each transit.
Oil tanker captains transiting the Strait of Hormuz are being offered pay equivalent to about $100,000 a month, along with bonuses of up to $50,000 for each passage, the Financial Times reported, citing people close to shipowners and crews.
Shipowners are raising compensation to keep seafarers on routes amid attacks on vessels and heightened risks. Manoj Yadav, general secretary of India’s Forward Seamen’s Union, told the FT that some workers are being offered large payments, while those who refuse face possible replacement and deductions from their wages for repatriation costs.
The FT said a captain’s usual monthly salary can be about $15,000, while ordinary sailors may earn as little as $1,500. Crews receive double pay while in the southern Red Sea and Gulf of Oman, and four to six times their usual rate for passages through what the source describes as Iranian territory.
Three people familiar with tanker owners and crews told the FT about additional hazard pay. Specialized tankers often make regular shuttle runs, so higher rates can continue for months despite the risk of missile and drone attacks. Entering the Persian Gulf, loading and departing typically takes about four days.
A typical supertanker carries about two million barrels of oil and has a crew of up to 35 people. Freight rates have reached a record $1.3 million a day, the FT reported, while shipowners face sharply higher war-insurance and fuel costs.
In August, Chinese shipping companies COSCO and China Merchants Energy Shipping stopped sending tankers through the Strait of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb and began taking cargoes outside the Persian Gulf. Together, they control more than 100 very large crude carriers, which had previously transported about half of China’s crude-oil imports from the Middle East.