By Florence Tan
SINGAPORE, Oct 8 (Reuters) – The number of vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz fell to the lowest in more than two months after attacks on tankers in the key waterway reached their highest last week since the start of the US-Israeli war with Iran, shipping data showed.
Seven commodity vessels passed through the strait on Tuesday, for the lowest figure since July 23, data from analytics firm Kpler showed.
“Crude crossing the strait fell 27% from a wartime high the week before, to at least 10.1 million barrels a day,” Kpler analysts Emmanuel Belostrino and Yui Torikata wrote in a note on October 6.
“That is back to its September average, but 74% of its pre-war level.”
Most of the fall was in ship-to-ship (STS) transfers in the Gulf of Oman, where cargoes move between tankers, they added.
However, exports from the Gulf of Oman coast and the Red Sea rose to 6.7 million bpd, more than twice pre-war levels, analysts said, making up for lost supply from Hormuz.
This helped keep overall exports of Middle East crude at the pre-war level, they said.
The number of vessels transiting the strait edged up to 10 on Wednesday, but was well short of the daily tally of more than 20 on Sunday and Monday, the data showed.
More vessels entered the strait than exited in the past two days.
The figures exclude vessels crossing with their Automatic Identification System transponders turned off to avoid detection.
LSEG data of all vessels crossing the strait showed eight on Tuesday, evenly divided between entries and exits, down from the previous day’s 14.
These included five oil tankers and the liquefied natural gas tanker Al Mafyar which loaded at Ras Laffan in Qatar and was set to head for Port Qasim in Pakistan, LSEG added.
Attacks on tankers sailing through Hormuz hit their highest last week of any week since the Iran war began, maritime security sources tracking incidents said, as Gulf producers made a bigger export push.
In the latest incident, projectiles struck a tanker 51 nautical miles north of Qatar’s Madinat ash Shamal, with casualties reported, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations agency said on Wednesday.
Before the February 28 start of the Iran war, about 125 large commercial vessels went through the strait each per day, comprising tankers, gas carriers, bulkers and container vessels.
Their cargoes accounted for a fifth of global supplies of crude oil and liquefied natural gas.
(Reporting by Florence Tan; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
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