Twelve Ships Hit Near Hormuz in a Week, a Record, as Oil Exports Slow

Twelve vessels were struck near the Strait of Hormuz in a single week — the highest weekly count on record — according to BBC Verify's analysis of data from a UK maritime agency. Oil exports through the corridor are slowing.

The number that matters is the insurance quote

A dozen strikes in seven days is not primarily a supply story. Traffic through a contested strait does not usually stop because a route becomes impossible; it stops because it becomes uninsurable, or because war-risk premiums rise until the voyage no longer pays.

That repricing moves faster than any physical shortage and it reaches landlocked importers through freight rates rather than through the oil price. The barrel can be available and affordable while the cost of moving it is not.

Ethiopia imports every litre

Ethiopia refines nothing. Every litre of petrol, diesel, jet fuel and heavy fuel oil burned in the country arrives by ship and then by road from Djibouti, paid for in dollars the central bank rations.

Three channels carry the consequence inland. Fuel import cost rises with freight and premium, not only with crude. Ethiopian Airlines — the country's largest earner of foreign currency — buys jet fuel in the same disrupted market. And the subsidy and pricing decisions the government takes in response land on the same budget already carrying a restructuring.

None of this is yet visible at an Addis Abeba pump. It arrives with a lag measured in cargoes.

Open

BBC Verify's count covers reported attacks rather than confirmed damage, and the agency data does not establish who is responsible. Nor is there a published figure for how far exports have fallen, or any statement from Ethiopian authorities on fuel stock cover.

Sources: BBC News, 16 October 2026