The attacks sent the price of oil surging, with benchmark Brent crude futures breaching $100 a barrel for the first time since July. At least one seafarer aboard a tanker was reported killed and another listed as missing.
Iran also said it had fired ballistic missiles at a base used by US forces in , the Guards said.
Recent days have also seen an escalation in fighting between , a Iranian tankers ablaze
The Americans said they destroyed five Iranian oil tankers overnight, releasing video of ships ablaze before they sank.
The US military’s Central Command called its attacks a response to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps targeting a US told reporters and another crew member was missing, the vessel’s charterer, Peninsula, said. Maritime security sources said it may have been hit by a drone.
The British maritime security agency UKMTO described a vessel in the vicinity that was listing, possibly taking on water after being struck by a projectile. Reuters could not immediately determine whether this referred to the same ship.
Read more, on either side of the strait.
Iran also threatened oil tankers in Kuwaiti and Bahraini ports, according to a statement carried by state media. A maritime security source reported a liquefied natural gas tanker was damaged in the Emirati port of Khor Fakkan.
The IRGC also said on Wednesday it had fired ballistic missiles at a base used by US forces near Al Azraq, in eastern Jordan. Jordan said its air defences had intercepted 18 of the 20 Iranian missiles, with two falling harmlessly in unpopulated areas. A US official said Iran’s strikes in Jordan were ineffective and all American troops were accounted for.
An explosion was heard in the southern part of the Iranian port city of Jask, coming from the sea, Iran’s Fars news agency reported late on Wednesday. It said no details were available on the source or cause of the blast.
Strait choked off
In recent weeks Washington had boasted of increasing success guiding tankers through the strait, which carried a fifth of oil supplies before the war. But any such gradual reopening appears to have been set back by a resumption of fighting this month.Claudio Galimberti, chief economist at consultancy Rystad Energy, said flows through Hormuz had fallen back as low as 2 million barrels per day, having reached as high as 8 million to 9 million bpd in the week before fighting resumed on August 30.
Even more severe than the rise in crude prices has been a surge in the cost of the fuels refined from it. The politically sensitive average retail price of US diesel hit a fresh all-time high on Wednesday above $5.94 a gallon.
Escalating combat between Saudi Arabia and the Iran-aligned Houthi movement that controls most populated parts of Yemen has created additional uncertainty for energy markets.
