Kuwaiti Tanker Hit in Hormuz as Attacks Continue Into October

A Kuwaiti-flagged very large crude carrier caught fire on October 1 after an unidentified projectile struck it in the Strait of Hormuz, the latest in a string of tanker attacks that has continued despite the U.S. military’s insistence that the chokepoint remains open to commercial traffic.

The vessel, the Kazimah III, operated by Kuwait Oil Tanker Co., was hit roughly eight kilometers off the coast of Oman while carrying an estimated 2 million barrels of crude, according to TradeWinds. The crew was reported safe, and the fire was brought under control. TradeWinds reported the tanker was transiting an unauthorized route at the time of the strike; the origin of the projectile has not been confirmed.

The attack came four days after another Kuwait Oil Tanker Co. VLCC, the Al Funtas, was struck while passing through the strait on September 28, according to Seatrade Maritime. Seatrade Maritime counted at least 16 attacks on vessels transiting Hormuz in September alone, including four separate incidents within a 24-hour span on September 28 and 29.

A gap between the battlefield and the balance sheet

The renewed strike underscores a widening gap between U.S. Central Command’s public assessment of the strait and the experience of shipowners actually moving crude through it. CENTCOM commander Adm. Brad Cooper said last month that U.S. forces had supported more than 2,000 commercial vessel passages and the movement of over 1 billion barrels of crude through Hormuz “in the last couple of months,” describing the posture as an “ironclad blockade” that has driven Iranian oil exports to zero, according to The Hill.

That volume claim has not stopped the attacks on individual ships, which have continued at a pace of roughly one every few days since late September. The discrepancy reflects two different measures of the same conflict: aggregate throughput versus the risk calculus facing any single vessel and its insurers.

That calculus has been expensive since the U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear and military sites in late February reshaped the maritime insurance market for Gulf transits. Protection and indemnity clubs including Gard, Skuld, NorthStandard, the London P&I Club and the American Club issued 72-hour notices terminating existing war-risk extensions in early March, forcing shipowners to renegotiate coverage at sharply higher rates, according to Lloyd’s List. Hull war cover for a seven-day Gulf transit, which ran about 0.25 percent of a vessel’s insured value before the crisis, reportedly reached roughly 1.0 percent at peak conditions — a fourfold increase that adds hundreds of thousands of dollars to the cost of moving a single VLCC load, according to PropertyCasualty360.

Oil prices pull back even as attacks continue

Oil markets have not moved in lockstep with the tanker strikes. Brent crude fell to $99.68 a barrel on October 2, down 2.57 percent on the day, after two consecutive sessions of gains, according to Trading Economics. The pullback followed a steeper drop in late September, when Brent fell nearly $6 to below $100 as traders pared back the geopolitical risk premium on hopes that U.S.-Iran talks would yield a durable de-escalation.

Traders appear to be pricing the conflict as a persistent but contained risk rather than an acute supply shock — a posture that leaves the market exposed if attacks escalate further or widen beyond individual tankers to infrastructure. The Strait of Hormuz carried roughly 20 million barrels a day, or about a fifth of global petroleum liquids consumption, before the crisis began, meaning any sustained disruption to flows would have outsized effects on global supply.

The Kazimah III strike arrives as the U.S. has expanded its military footprint in the Gulf, including the deployment of a third aircraft carrier to the region amid a broader troop buildup, as covered in AmericaStrikes’ reporting on the carrier deployment. It also follows the Treasury Department’s latest sanctions package targeting Iran’s auto, rail and steel networks, part of a continuing campaign of economic pressure detailed in AmericaStrikes’ coverage of the sanctions action.

Neither the Pentagon nor Kuwait Oil Tanker Co. had issued a public attribution for the October 1 strike as of this writing. CENTCOM has not commented specifically on the Kazimah III incident beyond its broader statements on throughput through the strait.

For shippers, the practical effect is a market where headline volume statistics and individual voyage risk increasingly diverge — a dynamic likely to keep war-risk premiums elevated even if diplomatic talks continue to pull the oil futures market’s risk premium lower.