October is the worst month on record for ship attacks near Hormuz, and tankers keep sailing anyway

Reuters, dateline Oslo on October 23, reported that October has been the worst month for attacks on commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and nearby waterways, according to data compiled by a Washington-based think tank that has tracked maritime security incidents worldwide since 2017. The affected vessels account for roughly 3.5% of a global VLCC fleet exceeding 900 ships, and daily freight rates above $1 million are pulling owners into loading cargoes inside the Gulf regardless. Lloyd’s List Intelligence, in its Strait of Hormuz Brief of October 22 covering the week of October 5-11, counted 104 transits by non-Iranian-linked vessels against 126 the previous week — 51 eastbound and 53 westbound, with 81 tanker and gas carrier movements against 105. That is a 17% weekly fall but still 31% above the August weekly average. Lloyd’s own summary line: traffic “remains relatively elevated.”

The attacks themselves are mostly Iranian claims. The Council on Foreign Relations' conflict tracker, updated October 23 and citing AP, records the IRGC’s October 22 claim to have struck four tankers conducting oil transfers while three further vessels hit mines. RFE/RL, citing Reuters, places the four simultaneous strikes in the northern Persian Gulf and the three mine strikes west of the strait; the same file logs a tanker hit by an “unknown projectile” off Oman on October 21 per UKMTO, Iraq’s closure of a major border crossing with Iran, and Saudi Aramco evacuating staff. Fox News logged a second UKMTO projectile report on October 23. An Iranian claim that two more supertankers struck mines early Saturday circulated via an aggregating Substack and remains, as of this edition, unconfirmed by UKMTO, Reuters or Ambrey.

On price, the two sides do not agree on what any of it has achieved. Trading Economics put Brent at $116.72 on October 23, up 3.14% on the day, 9.49% on the month and 79.02% year on year — though that is a CFD tracking the benchmark rather than a front-month settlement. The Hill had Brent touching $110 on October 16, its first time since May 20; CNBC had it closing at $104.28 on October 8, a session in which about 500,000 bpd of Gulf of Mexico output was also shut in for Hurricane Isaias. Against that, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Gulf oil exports have surpassed pre-war levels and exceed the January-February average, and that Washington has “decimated” Iran’s oil lifeline under Operation Economic Outcast — a claim carried in Fox News’s October 23 live file, accompanied by an administration-supplied chart whose underlying dataset is not identified.

Assessment: Bessent and Lloyd’s are not necessarily contradicting each other, which is the uncomfortable part. Volume per transit and the US-assisted shuttle system that Al Jazeera reported Tehran intends to disrupt can both rise while hull counts fall. The honest reading is that Iran has succeeded in making the strait expensive without making it impassable — $1 million daily rates are a toll, not a closure, and owners are paying it. Treat the Iranian strike tallies as claims: the IRGC announces, UKMTO logs, and the two sets rarely reconcile. Distrust any single Brent figure quoted without a publisher; the three in the record come from three sources on three different instruments.