By Emily Chow and Florence Tan
SINGAPORE, July 8 (Reuters) – At least four oil‑and‑gas tankers have reversed course and withdrawn from attempts to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, according to ship‑tracking data, as renewed attacks on vessels in this critical waterway heightened safety and security concerns.
The vessels’ diversions follow an incident on Tuesday in which a Qatari liquefied natural gas tanker and a Saudi‑flagged crude‑oil tanker were damaged near the strait after Iran reportedly fired missiles at ships there, prompting maritime authorities to elevate the threat level to “severe.”
Data from analytics firms Kpler and LSEG indicate that the three Qatari‑controlled LNG carriers – Al Ghariya, Duhail and Al Ruwais – had been moving westward toward the strait before altering course and turning back late on Tuesday. All three were empty and bound for Qatar’s Ras Laffan export terminal to load cargo.
Separate LSEG and Kpler records also show an Indian‑flagged tanker carrying roughly 2 million barrels of Kuwaiti crude, loaded late last week, made a U‑turn off Oman’s coast at the Hormuz gateway on Wednesday.
Since the conflict escalated in late February, at least 16 LNG cargoes have left Ras Laffan and ten have departed from ADNOC’s Das Island terminal in the United Arab Emirates, though this remains a small fraction of the average 7 million metric tons shipped monthly from the two hubs.
Vortexa analysts noted that a queue of ballast or empty vessels waiting to load at Ras Laffan has swollen to more than ten ships in early July.
Over 50 vessels operated by QatarEnergy and ADNOC are presently positioned across the Middle East Gulf, India and the Malacca Strait, with some deactivating their Automatic Identification System signals for periods exceeding ten days, Vortexa added.
Despite the heightened risk, two crude‑oil tankers successfully exited the strait. The very‑large crude carrier Tenjun, managed by Nippon Yusen KK and loaded with 2 million barrels of Qatari crude in late February, cleared Hormuz late on Tuesday. Another vessel, the VLCC Pertamina Pride, operated by Indonesia’s state‑owned Pertamina, also left the strait on Tuesday with 2 million barrels of Saudi crude loaded in early March; its transponder was switched off.
Nippon Yusen declined to comment on the Tenjun’s movements, and Pertamina did not respond promptly to a request for comment.
(Reporting by Emily Chow and Florence Tan; additional reporting by Yuka Obayashi in Tokyo, Fransiska Nangoy in Jakarta and Nidhi Verma in New Delhi)
