Leading shipping companies said on Thursday they expected their tankers to keep moving oil out of the Gulf in the event of a US-led attack on Iraq.
Ola Lorentzon, managing director of the world's largest oil tanker firm, Norway's Frontline, said it would be business as usual.
Other than the inevitable stoppage of supplies from Iraq, he said: "The consensus in the indus-try is that Iraq just does not have the striking power to hurt other producers."
The Gulf provides the global economy with a whopping 40 percent, 16 million barrels per day, of world crude exports, according to the Paris-based International Energy Agency.
Oil dealers across trading exchanges in London, New York and Singapore will be watching nervously for any major snag in the supply chain, which would send already inflated prices rocketing.
Seaborne transport of crude oil is potentially an Achilles' heel, but so far the big tanker operators are confident there will be few dramas.
Iraq has no navy and controls only a tiny stretch of coastline in the very northern reaches of the Gulf. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein saw his fleet annihilated in the 1991 Gulf War and the country is penned in by an enormous US and British naval force.
An armada of US and allied vessels are also at hand to protect tankers and oil loading points, while the US coast guard has dis-patched special patrol vessels to boost maritime security.
Svein Erik Amundsen, managing director of Norwegian shipping giant Bergesen, says his company's philosophy has always been to be as flexible as possible even in adverse circumstances.
"There were no operational problems during the 1991 Gulf War, put it that way," he said.
Both companies said their sea-farers had no objections to entering waters close to a potential war zone -- another potential sticking point. During the 1991 Gulf War strongly-unionized Japanese sea-farers refused to man tankers and vessels steaming into Gulf waters.
Military analysts agree there is little chance of a protracted campaign of disruption in strategic choke points like the narrow Strait of Hormuz, far-removed from Iraq, and Iraq somehow organizing attacks on supertankers an unlikely worst-case scenario.
That would shut in exports from Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Iran as well as crucial Saudi production.
But analysts doubt Saddam would be able to launch an effective hit-and-run sabotage campaign much further than his own shoreline some 320km north.
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