A small liquefied petroleum gas carrier, the Run Far, its deck lined with yellow pressure tanks lettered LPG, in calm water off Peng Chau, Hong Kong, with hills and two tall chimneys behind it under a · Ilkka Simomaa, via Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 4.0

Study · YANBU · 2026-10-10 · 8 min read · Oil, gas and shipping · Futures

Iran says it hit a gas carrier; its Vietnamese owner says it did not

What changed since chapter five: Iran's Revolutionary Guards said on Friday 9 October that they struck the LPG carrier NV Sunshine on the southern route they call illegal, and its Vietnamese owner, NVTrans, said the ship was not attacked; UKMTO reported a separate vessel hit and on fire off the United Arab Emirates, which shipping sources named as the supertanker Gem No.2; the IMO's own list now counts 100 confirmed incidents, eleven of them dated 28 September to 4 October; and Kpler reported the Saudi East-West pipeline back at 5.8 million barrels a day.

By the desk. Researched and written by an AI model from the sources listed at the end; nothing here restates another publication's text.

BWLPadjacent NVGSadjacent FROadjacent CMBTadjacent

What changed since chapter five

Chapter five closed on Friday 9 October with the highest weekly count of tanker attacks since the war began, a tanker struck off Qatar on 7 October, and President Trump's post that the United States would not attack Iran before the 3 November midterm elections. The step since then came from Iran. In a statement carried by the Tasnim news agency on Friday, the navy of Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps said that, hours earlier, 'NV Sunshine', a giant liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) carrier owned by the company Nhat Viet, was struck while attempting to transit the unauthorized route south of the Strait of Hormuz, and that the vessel suffered a large fire in its engine room and propulsion system. LPG is propane and butane, carried as a liquid under pressure or cold. The statement added that enforcement would no longer be confined to the strait: any vessel using an unauthorized passage would be pursued throughout the region. ^{[18, 6, 19, 10, 11]}

The owner says it did not happen. 'NVTrans officially confirms that M/T NV SUNSHINE was not attacked, no fire occurred in its engine room, and the vessel and all crew members remain safe, with the vessel operating normally,' the company said in a statement to Australian Associated Press, adding that it had kept continuous direct communication with the crew. Nguoi Quan Sat, a Vietnamese business newspaper, reported on Saturday 10 October that the company, Nhat Viet Transportation, called the report of an attack false news, said it stays in regular contact with the ship, and is a member of PetroVietnam Transportation Corporation (PVTrans), with a fleet of 19 vessels including two very large gas carriers. No record read for this chapter shows the ship damaged: the IMO's list of confirmed incidents, updated on 9 October, does not name it. ^{[13, 14, 1]}

A different ship was hit the same day. A vessel was struck by an unknown projectile 13 nautical miles west of Al Jazeera in the United Arab Emirates on Friday, causing a fire that was later put out, the UK Maritime Trade Operations centre, UKMTO, said, citing multiple sources; it said the crew's status, the damage and any pollution were unknown. UKMTO does not usually name vessels, but two shipping and security sources named the Panama-flagged crude supertanker Gem No.2, and Vanguard, a British maritime risk firm, put the strike at 10:00 GMT, Reuters reported; ship tracking showed the tanker fully laden and at anchor. There was no claim of responsibility. DPA, the German news agency, reported that it was not immediately clear whether UKMTO's report and the Guards' statement referred to the same incident. ^{[16, 12]}

The Guards' claim followed a warning. On Wednesday 7 October Mohammadreza Naqdi, an adviser to the Guards' commander, told the semi-official Fars News Agency that transit routes Iran deems illegal, the southern pathway hugging Oman's coast, would soon be closed, Reuters reported. He said the 'few routes' had been made by blasting rocky passages and were used by 'small boats smuggling oil and transferring it to tankers', and said: 'The Strait of Hormuz is closed, and the armed forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran have full control over it.' In recent months the US Navy has escorted merchant ships with their transponders switched off along that southern route to restore oil and gas shipments, DPA reported. ^{[17, 12]}

The record

The International Maritime Organization, the UN's shipping agency, keeps its own list of confirmed incidents. As at 9 October 2026 it counts 100 confirmed incidents in the Strait of Hormuz and the Middle East and 24 confirmed seafarer deaths. By the desk's count of the list, eleven entries are dated 28 September to 4 October, from the Al Funtas on 28 September to the Lipsi, the Cameroon Prosperity and the Gas Vela on 4 October, each marked damaged with no pollution; the On Peace on 5 October, with twelve seafarers injured, and the ST1 on 6 October follow. Windward, a maritime intelligence firm, lists the Gas Vela's IMO number as an LPG tanker hit by a drone or unknown projectile while transiting the southern corridor with its transponder off. The list does not yet show the tanker struck off Qatar on 7 October, which Windward reports, or the Gem No.2. ^{[1, 6]}

Kpler's media briefing of Friday 9 October, with flow data to Wednesday 7 October, shows what the attacks did to the barrels. Its Total Hormuz Clearance, oil leaving through the strait and by ship-to-ship transfer in the Gulf of Oman, fell from 12,260 thousand barrels a day on 4 October to 2,719 thousand on 7 October, and the seven-day average of 9,944 thousand sits about 42 percent below the pre-war baseline of 17,133 thousand. Tanker crossings of the strait went from 16 on 4 October to five on 7 October, against a seven-day average of 13 a day and 50 before the war. Kpler says its latest days are preliminary and have typically settled 1.5 to 2 times higher as confirmations land, and that its briefing does not attribute the attacks. ^[4]

The bypass held. Kpler reported that flows on Saudi Arabia's East-West Pipeline, which carries crude across the kingdom to the Red Sea, have recovered to 5.8 million barrels a day after the 10 September attack on it, and that Saudi Arabia exports from both coasts again, though the threat of further attacks clouds the outlook. Red Sea volumes averaged 3,904 thousand barrels a day over seven days against a pre-war baseline of 2,803 thousand; with the Gulf of Oman terminals, the regional seven-day average reached 18,975 thousand barrels a day, about 19 percent below its baseline. Fujairah's crude loadings set a record of 2.62 million barrels a day in September, Kpler Insight reported. Kpler Insight expects Saudi crude supply to average around 9 million barrels a day in October. ^[4]

Two other records moved on Friday. The US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control issued Russia-related General License 135, 'Authorizing Transactions Related to the Sale, Delivery, Offloading, and Importation of Diesel Fuel of Russian Federation Origin'; a general license is a standing permission that lets trades go ahead without a sanctions breach. CBS News reported that the President said Russia had agreed to release 300,000 tons of diesel immediately, and that Brent crude, the international benchmark, eased on Friday to around 103 dollars a barrel after his pledge on the midterms. On the Red Sea side, Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Yemen, Mohammed Al Jaber, said on Friday that Yemeni government forces had taken the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and Mayyun Island from the Houthis, and the Saudi civil aviation authority said three Saudi citizens were killed in Thursday's attacks on King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, CBS News reported. ^{[2, 19]}

Who it reaches

Every path is adjacent: no company listed in the United States is named in the claim, the denial or the counts. This chapter adds the gas carriers. BW LPG, which owns very large gas carriers, says in its results for April to June, filed on 28 August, that Middle East LPG exports carried by such ships were 46 percent lower in the first six months of 2026 than a year earlier 'as the conflict severely disrupted cargo movements through the Strait of Hormuz', and that a full reopening of the strait would almost certainly lift those exports but could also narrow the price gap between US and Far East LPG and reduce the distance-weighted demand for its ships. Navigator Holdings says in its report for the same quarter that none of its vessels operated in, or transited through, the Arabian Gulf or the Strait of Hormuz, and that Asian buyers turned to North America for substitute LPG, ethane and ethylene. ^{[7, 8]}

The crude tanker owners of earlier chapters stay on the path. Frontline's report for April to June lists actual or threatened attacks on commercial shipping and restricted transit through the Strait of Hormuz, Bab el-Mandeb and the Red Sea among the risks to its business. CMB.TECH's financial report for the first half of 2026 says the increase in its other operating income 'is mainly attributable to compensation received for loss of hire relating to vessels affected by the situation in the Strait of Hormuz'. Loss of hire is the earnings a ship forgoes while it cannot trade. ^{[9, 5]}

Where the sources disagree

On the ship. Iran's statement, as Tasnim carried it, names the owner Nhat Viet; AFP, quoting the state agency IRNA, wrote NatWit; TASS, citing the same IRNA statement, called the ship MT Sunshine. The Guards say the ship burned; its owner says nothing happened and the crew is safe; neither UKMTO nor the IMO list read here names the ship. The Gem No.2 off the UAE was named by shipping sources, not by UKMTO, and its operator could not be reached, Reuters reported. ^{[10, 11, 15, 13, 14, 16, 1]}

On the count. Reuters reported on 7 October that three maritime security sources counted at least 12 attacks on oil, gas and LPG tankers around the strait from 28 September to 5 October, and that the IMO's data then showed nine; the IMO's list as updated on 9 October now carries twelve entries dated in that same window, by the desk's count, which fits Reuters' note that the agency takes longer to verify incidents. Windward wrote on 9 October that UKMTO had logged 16 attacks on merchant ships in the Gulf over ten days, of which its analysts confirmed 12 vessels, 11 of them tankers. CNBC's report of 9 October is headlined 'Tanker attacks in Strait of Hormuz surge to wartime high as Iran tries to choke off oil exports' (cited for its headline; the page could not be read). ^{[18, 1, 6, 20]}

On the flows. The President's post of Thursday spoke of '22 Million Barrels, last night alone' through the strait, CBS News reported. Windward counted 11.13 million barrels of crude outbound through Hormuz on 7 October, up from 4.73 million the day before, and Kpler's preliminary floor for all oil cleared on 7 October is 2,719 thousand barrels. The crossing counts differ too: Windward counted 18 transits on 7 October and eight on 8 October, where Kpler counted five tanker crossings on 7 October. The measures differ in what they count (crude or all oil, tankers or all ships) and in how late confirmations land, and none is an official tally. On Bab el-Mandeb, the Saudi ambassador's claim of control stands against the Houthis' insistence on Tuesday that their fighters still had 'full control over all their gains on the ground', CBS News reported. ^{[19, 6, 4]}

What settles it next

The dated records still to come. The US Energy Information Administration's weekly petroleum report for the week ending Friday 9 October, moved by the Columbus Day holiday to Thursday 15 October at 12:00 p.m. Eastern time. The US midterm elections of 3 November, the date before which the President wrote there would be no attack. And the records with no date yet: the IMO's next update of its confirmed list, which will show whether the NV Sunshine, the tanker struck off Qatar or the Gem No.2 enter it; Kpler's confirmed figures for 6 and 7 October once late confirmations land; UKMTO's word on the Gem No.2's crew; and the revised proposals Iran's President, Masoud Pezeshkian, said on Thursday that Tehran had made and would finalize through mediators, CBS News reported. The next chapter opens with what those documents changed. ^{[3, 19, 1, 4, 16]}

Sources

Every stock is a company; the desk grades the company behind the stock. This article describes; it does not recommend. Adjacent means the company is not named in the event and the path by which it is reached is stated above.

All news →