Sailor killed in suspected missile blast aboard Gulf tanker as it is taken to Bahrain

Key Facts

A sailor was killed in an explosion aboard the Velos Sapphire in the Gulf on November 5, in an incident the operator believed was caused by a missile attack, Reuters reported. The Marshall Islands-flagged tanker was sailing toward Bahrain without cargo when the explosion occurred. The company said the blast caused a fire on board, which the crew managed to extinguish. The tanker was later taken to Khalifa Bin Salman Port in Bahrain. The incident has brought risks to Gulf shipping back into focus as shipping companies track separate developments near the Strait of Hormuz.

The company said the sailor who died had been reported missing after the explosion and was later found with fatal injuries. It reported no other injuries among the crew, who extinguished the fire on the vessel. There were also no reports of pollution, according to the operator’s statement cited by Reuters. The tanker had been heading to Bahrain without cargo, and its arrival at Khalifa Bin Salman Port moved the incident from an at-sea response to an assessment of the vessel’s condition. The company said it would open an investigation, while structural damage to the tanker remained under assessment.

Alongside the tanker incident in the Gulf, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said two tankers and a tugboat caught fire in separate incidents near the Strait of Hormuz. In the account reported by Reuters, the Guard said one tanker struck a mine south of the strait and another caught fire while going off course in the eastern part, before a tugboat that approached to help also caught fire. These accounts remain attributed to the Revolutionary Guard; Reuters reported its claims but did not independently verify them. The reported incidents occurred at a different location from the Velos Sapphire explosion in the Gulf, and sources have not linked them as part of a single attack. The toll from incidents near the passage therefore remains separate from the sailor’s death aboard the tanker bound for Bahrain.

The incidents follow a record number of attacks on commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz in October, the highest since March, according to the Associated Press. The news agency linked the increase to Iran’s attempt to exert greater economic pressure on the United States to push it to lift the blockade. This context places the ship incidents amid broader tensions over commercial shipping, but does not establish that the Gulf tanker incident is linked to the strait attacks. Nor do the reported events provide a consolidated tally of damage or confirm that the separate incidents were part of a single operation. They included no figures on ship traffic or the market’s response in November.

July data offer a dated indication of how risks affected marine insurance costs, not the impact of the November incidents. S&P Global said additional war-risk premiums in the region rose to 7.5%-10% of a vessel’s hull value on July 22, from 1%-3% several weeks earlier. In terms of transit, the strait recorded 10 crossings on July 21, compared with 16 on July 20, according to the company’s data. These figures show a daily decline in crossings and an increase in the range of insurance premiums in July. They do not measure shipping traffic when the tanker explosion occurred or during the incidents announced by the Revolutionary Guard in November.

Before the war began on February 28, the Strait of Hormuz handled 20% of global seaborne oil and liquefied natural gas flows, and more than 130 daily crossings, according to S&P Global. The scale of those flows underscores why energy and shipping companies are sensitive to the security of the passage, without the recent incidents in themselves indicating a new supply disruption. On May 12, the United Kingdom and France announced their political support for an independent, defensive multinational military mission, after a meeting attended by representatives of 38 countries. The two countries said the mission would support civilian shipping and conduct mine-clearance operations, with the start of operations conditional on a favorable environment. The arrangement remains a framework announced in May, and the available information did not include a start date for its operations.