Project Freedom Just Reopened Hormuz Bookings. Here's What Maersk, Hapag-Lloyd, and Kuehne+Nagel Are Telling Shippers This Week.

Between Sunday May 3 and Monday May 4, three things landed within hours of each other. On Sunday evening, Donald Trump announced “Project Freedom” via Truth Social — a US-coordinated effort to guide stranded commercial vessels out of the Strait of Hormuz, scheduled to start Monday morning Middle East time. On Monday, Hapag-Lloyd reopened bookings to and from selected Upper Gulf locations, routing via Sharjah on third-party feeders. And Pakistan’s six new overland transit corridors to Iran — formalised under SRO 691(I)/2026 on April 25 — came into force, creating a legal pathway for third-country goods to move through Pakistan into Iran by road.

None of those three is a clean ceasefire signal. They are the shape of a market settling into protracted disruption. For shippers with cargo bound for the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Iraq, Bahrain, or other Upper Gulf markets, the practical question this week isn’t “is the strait open.” It’s: what is each carrier actually accepting, what does it cost, and where are the alternative routes good enough to plan around?

This post pulls together the carrier and forwarder advisories that landed in the seven days through May 4 — Maersk’s Operational Updates 27, 28, and 29; Hapag-Lloyd’s Upper Gulf reopening, Gulf security deposit reminder, and Emergency Operations Charge for South Europe feeders; Kuehne+Nagel’s Strait of Hormuz situation update and stranded-tonnage report — and reads them against each other. The goal is one operator-grade document that answers what to revisit on bookings, tenders, and routing before the end of the week.

What’s actually open, what isn’t: a carrier-by-carrier read

The headline that’s easiest to misread is “bookings reopened.” Hapag-Lloyd has reopened bookings to and from selected Upper Gulf locations — including Kuwait, Saudi Arabia Dammam, Qatar, Iraq, and the UAE — but the routing is via Sharjah as a transshipment hub on third-party feeder services that do not transit the Strait of Hormuz. Bonded transport between Sharjah and Khor Fakkan takes about five days. There are no fixed weekly schedules; transit depends on regional safety conditions. Carrier haulage solutions via Jeddah remain in place from the March 27 framework. Read functionally, this is a workaround network running parallel to a closed strait — closer to the Cape rerouting Maersk imposed on its ME11/MECL services in March than to a return to normal.

Maersk has not declared a comparable reopening. Operational Update 29, published May 4, keeps in place: empty containers can only be returned to designated depots, not their usual return locations, for shipments into UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia Jubail, Iraq, and Oman Duqm; an Emergency Freight rate for cargo to and from those ports plus Saudi Dammam and the rest of UAE; Jebel Ali contract rates being updated via Khor Fakkan; Flex Hub/Flex Route sales on water suspended for Salalah; storage fees applying from day 15 after discharge at the storage-in-transit port. Maersk has issued operational updates roughly twice a week for two months — the 27, 28, 29 sequence inside eight days is the cadence of a network that’s still being reconfigured, not stabilised.

Kuehne+Nagel’s seaexplorer data — referenced in their April 28 alert — gives the underlying scale: 34 of the world’s largest container vessels remain immobilised in the Persian Gulf, representing roughly 306,000 TEU out of 345,092 TEU stranded across 103 vessels total. That’s about 88% of stranded container capacity sitting on top-five carrier hulls. Hapag-Lloyd’s CEO has publicly said the carrier is waiting for a “window of opportunity” to transit the strait, having extracted only one stranded vessel — the 4,253 TEU Tema Express — so far.

Reading these against each other:

Carrier	Upper Gulf bookings	Hormuz transits	Surcharges/charges in force	Notable operational constraint
Hapag-Lloyd	Reopened May 4 for selected Upper Gulf locations via Sharjah feeder routing, without Hormuz transit	Not yet — waiting for safe window	Security deposit for cross-border imports in the Gulf (Apr 29 reminder); Emergency Operations Charge (EOO/EOD) for South Europe third-party feeder services, announced Apr 28 and effective May 8 for non-FMC / May 27 for FMC; existing War Risk Surcharge ($1,500/TEU from March 2) and Emergency Fuel Surcharge	No fixed weekly schedule on the Sharjah feeders; transit depends on regional safety conditions
Maersk	Booking suspensions and Emergency Freight framework still active for affected Gulf routings	No reopening announced; ME11/MECL services rerouted via Cape of Good Hope since March 1	Emergency Freight rate for Iraq, Kuwait, KSA Dammam and Jubail, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, and Oman ex-Salalah; EBS adjustments; Pick-Up Charge Export (PIC) at non-preferred empty locations effective Apr 6; storage fees from day 15	Empty returns to designated depots only; Flex Hub suspended for Salalah; Jebel Ali rates updating via Khor Fakkan
CMA CGM	Bookings to Middle East suspended earlier in crisis with cargo diverted to contingency ports; current acceptance should be checked against CMA CGM advisories before booking	Four CMA CGM vessels turned back from a 12-ship convoy attempt on April 18 after Iran re-closed the strait; CMA CGM Everglade was hit by a rocket attack off Oman	Emergency conflict surcharge of $3,000/FEU on Persian Gulf and Red Sea cargo announced jointly with Hapag-Lloyd in early March; specific charges should be verified lane-by-lane on current tariff and customer advisory pages	Per Alphaliner reporting at peak exposure, 14 CMA CGM ships were sheltering east of Hormuz at Doha and Abu Dhabi; tonnage skew toward chartered vessels means third-party tonnage providers carry exposure
MSC	“End of Voyage” declared for all Gulf-bound cargo earlier in crisis; six MSC vessels (including 19,224 TEU MSC Clara) escaped on April 18 during the brief Iranian reopening	No broad return-to-normal signal identified in the advisories reviewed for this post; MSC and Hapag-Lloyd reportedly working on similar Khor Fakkan-based workarounds	Bookings to Middle East halted earlier in crisis; emergency fuel and routing-related charges should be verified lane-by-lane against current MSC tariff and customer advisory pages	Per Alphaliner reporting, MSC was the most exposed carrier with 15 vessels and 109,000 TEU sheltering at peak; one third of MSC’s deployed Middle East Gulf capacity was affected

The pattern across the four big lines is similar, even though the details differ by carrier: selected bookings are returning on alternative routings, but normal transits through the strait have not resumed. Surcharges introduced in February and March — War Risk, Emergency Fuel Surcharge, Emergency Bunker Surcharge, Peak Season Surcharge to the Upper Gulf — remain live on many affected lanes. Hapag-Lloyd’s April guidance — that even after stabilisation it will take 6-8 weeks to normalise the network, with crisis costs running at $50-60 million per week — has not been replaced by a clean return-to-normal advisory.

If your team is tracking carrier advisory pages, depot status, surcharge changes, and route updates across four carriers manually, that’s roughly 12-15 source pages refreshed daily during a week like this one. Walk through how operations teams consolidate carrier event streams across carriers in a single view.

The Pakistan corridor: what it is, and what it isn’t

Pakistan’s Ministry of Commerce issued the Transit of Goods through Territory of Pakistan Order 2026 on April 25, under SRO 691(I)/2026. The order permits third-country goods to be moved through Pakistan and delivered to Iran by road. Six designated routes link the ports of Karachi, Port Qasim, and Gwadar to the Iranian border crossings at Gabd and Taftan, transiting Balochistan via Turbat, Panjgur, Khuzdar, Quetta, and Dalbandin. The shortest path — Gwadar to Gabd — reduces transit time to the Iranian border to roughly 2-3 hours, against 16-18 hours from Karachi, and Pakistani officials project transport cost savings of 45-55% on that segment versus moving via Karachi.

What this is: a legal pathway for moving cargo destined for Iran through Pakistan by road, including cargo affected by the US naval blockade of Iranian ports. Reporting in The National and Defence Security Asia put the number of stranded Iran-bound containers at more than 3,000. The order activates a 2008 Pakistan-Iran road transport agreement that had been dormant for 17 years. Reporting confirms the legal framework is active, though the movement status of the stranded Iran-bound containers remains less clear.

What this isn’t: a general Hormuz bypass for cargo bound for the Upper Gulf states. The corridor moves goods to Iran. For cargo bound for the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, or Bahrain, the operational answer remains feeder transshipment through Sharjah, Khor Fakkan, or Jeddah — not Pakistani road transit. The corridor matters for Iran-bound flows specifically, and as a structural signal that overland alternatives to the strait now have a legal framework attached. It does not change tomorrow’s booking decision for a UAE-bound shipment.

One caveat worth carrying forward: the routes pass through Balochistan, where insurgent activity has historically targeted CPEC infrastructure. Multiple regional analysts — the Sri Lanka Guardian, Peshawar-based academics quoted by Al Jazeera — flag security on the southwestern border as the variable that determines whether the corridor sustains volume.

Project Freedom: what it actually is

The framing of Project Freedom in the early reporting matters because it determines how shippers and underwriters read the next two weeks. Trump’s Truth Social post on Sunday May 3 described the operation as the United States “guiding” stranded vessels out of the strait. CENTCOM’s Sunday statement detailed the support package: guided-missile destroyers, more than 100 land and sea-based aircraft, multi-domain unmanned platforms, and 15,000 service members — alongside the existing US naval blockade of Iranian ports in place since April 13.

What the operational reporting clarifies: this is not direct US Navy escort of commercial vessels in the close-protection sense. Two US officials quoted by Axios and a source cited by The Jerusalem Post describe a coordinated mechanism involving governments, shipping companies, and insurers, with Navy ships positioned “in the vicinity” and providing routing information on lanes not mined by Iranian forces. The US-led Joint Maritime Information Center has advised vessels to cross the strait in Omani waters and has set up an “enhanced security area.” As of Monday afternoon Middle East time, two merchant vessels had crossed under the new arrangement, per CENTCOM via PBS reporting.

The risk side: Iran’s military command stated on Monday that vessels passing the strait must coordinate with them, and warned that any foreign armed force entering the strait would be “attacked.” The Sunday small-craft attack on a bulk carrier 11 nautical miles west of Sirik, Iran — confirmed by UKMTO — landed the day before Project Freedom’s launch. Mine-clearing in the strait has begun but is expected to take weeks. The IMO Secretary General’s assessment that “there is no safe transit anywhere in the Strait of Hormuz” pre-dates the announcement but has not been retracted.

What this means for routing decisions this week: insurer behaviour is the gating factor, not the announcement. Maersk’s own bulletins note that several insurers reduced or withdrew vessel coverage for the Red Sea, Gulf of Oman, and Persian Gulf at the start of the crisis. P&I war risk coverage was withdrawn effective March 5 per Alphaliner reporting. Until war risk premiums settle and underwriters publicly accept the strait again, “reopening” remains routing through Sharjah, Khor Fakkan, Jeddah, or the Cape — not through the strait under a US flag.

Three decisions to revisit before Friday

Bookings to UAE/Saudi/Qatar/Kuwait/Iraq/Bahrain. If you have cargo on the water under a Maersk Emergency Freight booking heading toward the Gulf, your real decisions are still Maersk’s options A/B/C: complete the originally planned voyage when safe, return to origin, or onward to a new port of discharge. Day-15 storage fees apply at the storage-in-transit port. Hapag-Lloyd’s reopening doesn’t replace this — it adds a routing path via Sharjah feeders for selected new Upper Gulf bookings, with no fixed weekly schedule. The question to take to your account team: under what cargo categories (dry, reefer, special) and on what feeder cadence will Hapag accept your specific lane this week, and what is the Sharjah-Khor Fakkan bonded-transport lead time on top of feeder transit?

Q3 tenders that priced Hormuz as resolved. Tenders being awarded this month with assumptions of Q3 normalisation should be re-read against Hapag-Lloyd’s still-current 6-8 weeks-after-stabilisation guidance and Maersk’s continued issuance of Emergency Freight rates and Cape rerouting on ME11/MECL. Project Freedom is a guidance mechanism, not a settled return to schedule reliability. War Risk Surcharge, EFS, EBS, and Peak Season Surcharge to the Upper Gulf remain live charges on affected lanes. If your tender pricing assumed those rolling off, that assumption has not been validated.

Iran-bound cargo specifically. If your trade lane includes shipments to Iran — for clients in pharmaceuticals, food, or other authorised categories — the Pakistan corridor is now a legal option to investigate. Karachi-Taftan or Gwadar-Gabd via TIR may be relevant for Iran-direct flows, but reporting on live movement of the stranded containers remains mixed. The route is materially shorter than waiting for Iranian ports to clear the US blockade. The constraint is Balochistan security and the absence of a proven high-volume track record on customs coordination at the border crossings. For lanes outside Iran-direct, the Pakistan corridor is signal, not a routing change.

What to watch this week

The decision-relevant signals for the next 7 days: the count of merchant vessels crossing the strait under the Project Freedom mechanism; whether MSC and CMA CGM publish their own equivalent of Hapag-Lloyd’s Upper Gulf reopening framework; whether Maersk publishes Operational Update 30 with rate or routing changes attached; whether war risk premiums for the strait visibly tighten; whether any Iranian response materially escalates after the Monday warnings. None of those are settled by the Sunday-Monday news. The carrier advisory pages, not the political headlines, are where the next operational decisions actually live.