Nine ships hit in six days in Hormuz as the IEA’s diesel release is overrun within 48 hours

USNI News reported on 9 October that a ship has been struck in the Strait of Hormuz nearly every day this month, citing the International Maritime Organization: between 1 October and Tuesday 6 October, nine vessels were hit, most of them crude carriers. That is an institutional count from the UN’s shipping regulator and the strongest datum available on the waterway. Beyond it, the picture thins quickly. The specialist tracker straits.live, updated at 1757Z on 10 October and counting Day 224 of the closure, describes the strait as “effectively” closed to commercial traffic and records four transits on 4 October against a normal of roughly 85 a day; its methodology is not published. The advocacy group United Against Nuclear Iran reported on 5 October that large clusters of vessels are loitering on both sides of the strait, while citing the Joint Maritime Information Center’s observation of increased open transits since the memorandum was signed. Al Jazeera asked on 5 October whether Iran is charging a toll for passage. It framed that as a question, and it remains one.

The price series shows an intervention being absorbed. CNBC reported Brent closing at $100.20 on Wednesday 7 October, down 38 cents, after IEA member states agreed to prioritise the release of diesel stocks; executive director Fatih Birol said members still hold emergency stocks equivalent to 1.1 billion barrels, including more than 200 million barrels of diesel. By 9 October TradingEconomics put Brent at $104.43, up 0.14% on the day, down 2.97% over the month and 66.48% higher than a year earlier — figures derived from a contract-for-difference tracking the benchmark rather than settlement data. straits.live logged $104.72 on 10 October. OilPrice.com reported Brent back above $105 as attacks on tankers grew more frequent — and, in the same item, noted US Gulf Coast operators shutting in production and preparing refineries ahead of an approaching storm.

Assessment: Treat the four-day Brent line as a mixed-source series: CNBC settlement, a CFD proxy and a tracker, stitched together. The direction is real, the precision is not. More importantly, the barrel is being bid by two things at once, and only one of them is the Gulf — an American weather event is inside that number, which is exactly how a Hormuz risk premium gets overstated by people who want it overstated. The IMO count is the figure to carry forward, because nine strikes in six days measures behaviour rather than sentiment. If Washington enters the Yemen war, the price test is whether tankers start moving again or whether the loitering clusters simply grow.