LNG Tanker Hit Mine in Hormuz? What Iran’s Guards Claim

The navy of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has claimed that a ship carrying liquefied natural gas struck a naval mine and suffered a massive explosion in the eastern Strait of Hormuz on November 13, having ignored what the Guards described as repeated warnings and attempted to use the strait’s southern route. The Guards’ navy stated that the vessel had tried to pass along a route Iran had not authorised, under the cover of U.S. fighter jets, but named neither the ship nor its flag, owner or crew. No navy, shipowner or maritime security authority had confirmed the incident by the end of the day, and U.S. Central Command had made no public statement on it. Added to the claims made since October 31, the statement takes the number of merchant ships Iran says have struck mines in the strait to at least 21, a tally growing considerably faster than anything outside Tehran can verify.

The claim came a day after Iranian media reported four oil tankers hit by explosions in waters Tehran considers restricted, and extends a running count of mine claims in which not one ship has been identified. Central Command’s commander Admiral Brad Cooper declared on August 28 that all Iranian sea mines had been cleared from the internationally recognised transit routes, and the command repeated on October 30 that the primary lanes remained clear. The command rejected an Iranian mine claim in July as false, and stated in September that the tanker El Gaia, which the Guards said had hit a mine, had in fact been struck by an Iranian drone off Oman. Attacks with missiles and drones are nonetheless real, with one independent count recording 37 attacks on shipping in October, the highest monthly figure since the war began in late February, and at least 10 ships hit in the first 10 days of November.

A strike on a gas carrier would carry significantly heavier consequences than the oil tanker claims before it, since Qatar exports virtually all of its liquefied natural gas through the strait and has seen two of its carriers hit this year. The Qatar-linked carrier Al Rekayyat was struck on July 7 about eight nautical miles east of Limah in Oman, in an attack Qatar blamed on Iran, and the Q-Max carrier Al Mayeda, operated by Qatar Gas Transport Company, Nakilat, was hit by unidentified objects on October 30 while carrying gas to Pakistan, with all 25 crew unharmed. QatarEnergy, whose Ras Laffan complex was damaged in March, has since extended force majeure on deliveries to buyers in Italy, Pakistan and Bangladesh until the end of December, while the Guards’ warnings target the owners and insurers still using the escorted southern corridor.

Liquefied natural gas is carried at around minus 162 degrees Celsius in insulated tanks inside a double hull, and it burns only once it leaks, vaporises and mixes with air at a concentration of between five and 15 percent, which is why more than six decades of seaborne trade have produced no case of a loaded carrier’s cargo tanks exploding at sea. A blast of the scale the Guards described would therefore be unprecedented in the industry’s history. The ship in the November 13 claim had not been named by Iran or matched to any vessel by the morning of November 14.