The Strait of Hormuz crisis has upended global shipping. Maryland’s ports and supply chains are absorbing the costs — with more pain potentially ahead.
By Michael Phillips | MDBayNews
The Strait of Hormuz is roughly 7,000 miles from the Port of Baltimore. But the economic distance has collapsed to nearly zero.
Since February 28 — the day the United States and Israel launched air strikes against Iran — shipping traffic through the strait, which once carried roughly 20 percent of the world’s seaborne oil and liquefied natural gas, has been largely blocked. The closure has triggered what the International Energy Agency has characterized as “the greatest global energy security challenge in history.”
For Maryland, that challenge has a price tag — measured in fuel surcharges, rising diesel costs, stalled cargo timelines, and a state legislature that has already begun fighting over who absorbs the bill.
The economic distance has collapsed to nearly zero.
What the Closure Means for Ports Like Baltimore
The Port of Baltimore’s direct exposure to Persian Gulf commodity flows is limited. The port’s primary trade lanes — automobiles, coal, sugar, gypsum, and containerized goods from Europe and Asia — don’t run through the Strait of Hormuz. But that has not insulated Maryland’s shipping infrastructure from the conflict’s cascading effects.
Vessels that previously transited the Strait of Hormuz to reach the Suez Canal and onward to U.S. East Coast ports must now reroute around the Cape of Good Hope, adding approximately 10 to 15 days to transit times. That rerouting doesn’t just delay specific shipments — it effectively removes vessel capacity from the global pool, tightening availability across all trade lanes, including those serving Baltimore.
Ocean carriers such as MSC, CMA CGM, Ocean Network Express, and Maersk have already started implementing fuel surcharges and higher rates across various trade lanes. Trucking fuel surcharges have risen 25 percent. FedEx and UPS have also implemented higher fuel surcharges, setting a record-high quarter for ground delivery costs. Every one of those costs touches goods moving through Maryland’s port complex.
In early March, the container vessel Maersk Baltimore — named for the city — was reported to be inside the Persian Gulf and unable to exit as the strait closure took hold. Its situation, though ultimately resolved, was an early symbol of just how globally enmeshed Maryland’s shipping identity is with the crisis.
The Fuel Cost Squeeze
The most direct Maryland exposure runs through energy prices. Brent crude surged from approximately $61 per barrel in January 2026 to a peak of over $118 per barrel by the end of Q1, nearly doubling in three months. Diesel — the lifeblood of port trucking, warehouse logistics, and rail connections out of Baltimore — reached $5.40 per gallon in that same window.
In Maryland, the state gas tax is approximately 46 cents per gallon, and the revenue feeds the Transportation Trust Fund, which supports highways and bridge infrastructure. When pump prices spiked — the national average rose from $2.98 before the strikes to $3.72 by mid-March — Maryland Republican lawmakers moved quickly, introducing legislation to pause the gas tax for 30 days. Governor Wes Moore’s administration declined to signal support.
The episode illustrated a political fault line that the crisis exposed. For port-dependent industries — trucking companies operating out of Dundalk, logistics firms serving the I-95 corridor, agricultural exporters shipping through the Chesapeake basin — the fuel cost surge is not an abstraction. It compresses margins and, ultimately, flows to consumers.
Fertilizer: The Farm Country Exposure
Maryland’s agricultural counties face an additional dimension of the crisis that receives less attention than oil prices. The Persian Gulf accounts for roughly 30 to 35 percent of global urea exports and around 20 to 30 percent of ammonia exports — meaning up to 30 percent of internationally traded fertilizers normally transit the Strait of Hormuz.
Unlike oil, the fertilizer sector does not have internationally coordinated strategic reserves, making supply disruptions more difficult to manage. Global fertilizer prices could average 15 to 20 percent higher during the first half of 2026 if the crisis continues. For Maryland’s Eastern Shore farming operations and the export of agricultural commodities through Baltimore, this is a compounding pressure on top of existing tariff-driven uncertainty.
The Insurance Market No One Is Watching
One of the least visible but most structurally significant impacts on port operations involves war risk insurance. War risk insurance premiums have increased four to five times over pre-conflict levels since fighting began February 28. War risk policies carry a 72-hour cancellation clause at the insurer’s discretion when conflict erupts, giving underwriters the ability to reprice exposure rapidly — and they have.
War-risk insurance alone has tripled to quadrupled on Gulf-adjacent routes. For vessels operating on routes connecting Baltimore to transshipment hubs in Europe and Asia, those cost increases move through the system regardless of whether a given ship ever approaches the strait.
Silence Where Baltimore Needs an Answer
While the crisis has unfolded over nearly two months, Maryland’s port leadership has been conspicuously quiet. MDBayNews found no public contingency communications from the Maryland Port Administration to terminal operators, no port-specific impact assessment from MDOT, and no formal public briefing from the Moore administration on what the Hormuz closure means for Maryland’s $70 billion port economy.
The contrast with other major U.S. ports is stark. At the Port of Los Angeles, international trade experts were convened for a formal news briefing on the war’s supply chain effects, with one senior analyst warning that “the Middle East, and therefore the world, has changed permanently.” Baltimore has held no equivalent event.
The contrast with Maryland’s own recent history is equally pointed. When the Key Bridge collapsed in March 2024, MPA Executive Director Jonathan Daniels convened a Port Commission meeting within days, Governor Moore addressed ILA workers on the waterfront, and state and federal agencies stood up business recovery infrastructure almost immediately. That same crisis-communication architecture has not been activated for a disruption that, while less acute locally, is proving far more economically persistent.
Maryland Republicans moved faster than the administration on even the most visible consumer impact — introducing a 30-day gas tax pause within weeks of the price spike. The Moore administration declined to signal support, and the governor’s public commentary on the war’s economic effects has been limited to a passing acknowledgment of high gas prices at an unrelated transit event.
Governor Moore has said the Port of Baltimore supports more than 273,000 Maryland jobs and carries a $70 billion annual economic value. Those figures were from a January press release celebrating record cargo volumes — before the war. No updated projections have been published. No public briefing has been scheduled. No contingency framework has been announced.
Maryland’s port is too important — and this crisis too consequential — for the administration’s response to amount to a lament about gas prices at a ribbon-cutting.
Maryland’s port is too important for silence to be the strategy.
SOURCES: NPR, CNBC, Kpler/MarineTraffic, Supply Chain Dive, TariffsTool.com, Congressional Research Service via Congress.gov, WYPR, Spectrum News, CBS Baltimore, The Baltimore Banner, Baltimore Sun
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