Originally Posted by
Mr Mac
Lonewolf 50
My cousin served on tankers during that period, and did many transits, and indeed was on one of the ones shot up. They used to have to wait off Muscat to get special insurance clearance, and had a limited time in the Gulf while that cover was in place. He said the missiles were less of an issue than being strafed, though given the clear lack of an Iranian Air Force now that should not be an issue, though missile guidance and indeed Drones have all changed, and improved in the intervening 30 plus years.
I do not think tanker design has basically changed that much, and indeed some of those hulls maybe on their second Rodeo in the straits so to speak. I have emailed him given the ongoing discussion and indeed what is happening again there, and he said there were quite a few damaged and some severely back then, but he did not think the loss rate was as high as 40, he believed it to be in the low teens. He did say that he thinks you will start to see the convoying again of tankers in the not too distant future, as its just too much of an important product and choke point.
Cheers
Mr Mac
Back then the cargoes were mostly crude oil. These days there are also a lot of LNG carriers, i.e. liquified methane - and those ships are definitely not the same thing as a old-style crude tanker. Getting crude oil to burn can take a bit of effort, and the spread of fire is relatively slow. Getting LNG to burn, and the rate of spread of fire, is a dramatically different thing. Quatar gas is about 20% of world shipping LNG supplies. Combine all this that is why the LNG spot prices have gone ballistic, the crude oil prices not so much.