Iran has ramped up attacks on ships in nearby waters, with about as many attacks in the last week as in all of September, raising the risks for ships navigating the Strait of Hormuz.
On Wednesday, a container ship, the GFS Pride, sank off the coast of Oman after a strike the day before left it engulfed in flames, according to maritime analysts. Containers were left floating near the attack, according to Pakistan’s National Hydrographic Office, a maritime agency operated by Pakistan’s Navy.
Another container ship, the GFS Giselle, was hit by “unknown projectiles” while going through the strait on Wednesday, according to the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore. The crew members of both vessels were safe, the statement said, noting that both ships sailed under the Singapore flag.
Dimitris Maniatis, the founder of Marisks, a maritime risk management firm, reviewed photos of the incident and said containers were scattered across a wide area of the waterway.
“All sorts of people are finding containers and opening them up,” he said. Photos showed people in the area in small boats filled with boxes of goods that had been in the containers. He said it was not immediately clear whether the United States or Iran had carried out the attack. Iran claimed the vessel hit a naval mine, but maritime analysts said there was no independently verified evidence supporting this claim.
The sharp rise in attacks over the last week — at least 15, according to maritime analysts — represented a sea change in risk, even for an industry that had already normalized operating in a much more dangerous environment than before the start of the war nearly eight months ago. The U.S. response to the increase in Iranian attacks has been muted, though a bulk carrier in the Gulf of Oman was struck by a U.S. military fighter aircraft on Saturday, according to Marisks.
“There’s no U.S. response, so Iran is trying to further assert its control over the Strait of Hormuz — and it’s succeeding,” Mr. Maniatis said.
More than 100 ships have been struck since the start of the war in Iran. The Cape Dao, another ship, also sank on Tuesday, three weeks after it was struck, according to the Pakistani naval agency. One sailor died in that attack.
Oil prices were mostly higher on Wednesday, with Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, around $106 a barrel. The global price was just under $70 a barrel on the eve of the war in late February.
Elsewhere in the Middle East, fighting intensified between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis, an Iran-backed militia, leaving residents in the capitals of Saudi Arabia and Yemen on edge.
The Houthis, emboldened by regional instability, struck a building owned by the state-owned energy giant Saudi Aramco on Tuesday night, the kingdom’s energy ministry said, as Saudi and Houthi forces traded attacks. Saudi Arabia, one of the world’s most important energy suppliers, has bombed Houthi positions in Yemen in support of the internationally recognized Yemeni government, which is fighting to retake territory seized by the Houthis.
Over the weekend, the Houthis carried out the deadliest attack on Saudi Arabia in more than a decade, striking King Khalid International Airport and killing at least 13 people and wounding more than 300.
The Houthi assault on the headquarters of Saudi Aramco resulted in no casualties or injuries but caused a “limited fire,” the Saudi authorities said.
The strike damaged the office tower’s top three floors, according to two people with knowledge of the impact who spoke on condition of anonymity. No oil production or export infrastructure was damaged in the attack.
An initial analysis by Kpler, a maritime data company, showed that the intensified attacks had sharply curbed crude oil exports from the Persian Gulf in the seven days that ended on Oct. 9, compared with the previous week. Kpler noted a decline in oil flows this month and attributed it to the attacks, but its analysts say oil exports are likely to be revised higher as Kpler gathers more information on shipments.
U.S. military forces have played a crucial role in helping ships transport oil from the Persian Gulf to world markets, assisting them in navigating the southern part of the strait close to Oman with their location trackers off. But there are limits to what protection U.S. Central Command can provide, even with significant resources including weapons that can intercept Iranian drones and missiles.
The strike on Saudi Aramco’s nerve center came during the third day of the WPC Energy Congress, a weeklong oil and gas summit in Riyadh. The conference went forward as planned on Wednesday, with panel discussions on topics like the future of hydrogen and the outlook for natural gas.
The International Energy Agency said on Wednesday that Saudi Arabia and other crude oil producers in the Persian Gulf exported 13.9 million barrels per day last month, or 75 percent of prewar levels.
The rebound in exports from the region helped push up the global supply of oil. But the agency said it left its projections for global supply for the rest of the year mostly the same because of the uncertainty caused by this month’s “heightened security concerns.”
Peter Eavis contributed reporting from New York.
The post Attacks on Ships in Strait of Hormuz Escalate Sharply appeared first on New York Times.
