Tanker Hit and Disabled Near Strait of Hormuz
Overnight Monday, a tanker was hit by a projectile at a position east of the Musandam Peninsula, on the Omani coastal route through the Strait of Hormuz.
At about 2025 UTC, the master of an unnamed oil tanker reported that the vessel had been hit, damaging the engine room and disabling the ship. The crew remained safe, according to reporting agency UKMTO; the status of any environmental impacts was not known. The last reported position was about nine nautical miles to the northeast of Ash Shishah, a roadless outpost on the eastern edge of the peninsula.
The strike adds to a long tally of damaging attacks on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and the Arabian Gulf. The IMO counts a total of 68 incidents since the conflict in the Gulf began six months ago, averaging about three casualties a week. At least 20 seafarers have been killed, 35 have been wounded and one remains missing, by IMO's assessment.
The potential for environmental damage from these repeated attacks is high. After a disabling strike earlier this month, the bulker Minoan Pioneer remained stranded in the strait for days; it likely released a fuel oil slick that stretched northwest as far as Qeshm, on the opposite side of the waterway. The outcome can be much worse: the wrecked Suezmax tanker Caroline Bezengi, which was disabled by an explosion and drifted aground on an island off southeastern Oman, has polluted thousands of square kilometers in an environmentally sensitive marine area.
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Despite the risks, there are powerful motives to make the run. Current spot charter rates for a VLCC lifting oil inside the Gulf can reach as high as $800,000 per day, per Clarksons. Oil traders can afford to pay such extreme freight rates because they are able to buy GCC crude grades at heavily discounted prices - as low as $30-40 below Brent, according to TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanne.
"It costs more or less $20 million to move a VLCC through Hormuz and ?come back . . . divided by two million barrels of oil, that's an extra $10 a barrel," Pouyanne said at an energy conference Monday, per Reuters.