A tanker carrying liquefied gas hit a mine and suffered an explosion on Friday while attempting to transit the Strait of Hormuz via a route not authorized by Iran, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Navy said.
The vessel was using an “unauthorised and dangerous route” in the Strait of Hormuz, according to Iran’s state media cited by Reuters.
The attacks on vessels carrying energy products through the Strait of Hormuz have intensified in the past month, with Iran reporting incidents nearly every day.
On Thursday, the Iranian military said four oil tankers were hit by explosions in the Strait of Hormuz. The tankers had ignored warnings from Iran and entered restricted areas of the Strait, Tehran said, as it remains defiant that it controls transits.
Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s top negotiator and Parliament Speaker, told Al Jazeera in an exclusive interview on Wednesday that the Strait of Hormuz navigation would not return to pre-war conditions, ever.
“There are no ‘free waters’ [international waters] there, and the 1982 [UN Convention on the Law of the Sea] does not apply to the strait … The regulations within the Strait of Hormuz are governed by the laws of the two littoral states that border it,” the official told Al Jazeera.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday, “We don’t need a deal with Iran” and that “Those days have long since passed. We’ve got their money, Hundreds of Billions of Dollars, and we’ve got their Strait!”
Friday’s mine-and-explosion incident with the LNG vessel comes days after Kpler data showed that exports of liquefied natural gas via the Strait of Hormuz last month reached the highest total since February, at 31 tankers, compared with 23 in September.
Despite the increase in loadings, the total from Qatar is far from pre-war levels. According to Kpler, LNG loadings at Qatar’s Ras Laffan terminal exceeded 2.7 million tons in October, while the country exported nearly 6.2 million tons in February.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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