No lights and no radio: Getting oil through Hormuz is a risky job

Vessels in the Strait of Hormuz near the beach of Bandar Abbas, Iran, on Monday | West Asia News Agency / via REUTERS

Oct 2, 2026

The tanker captain summoned his years of experience when he saw the blast in front of him. He veered his 300-meter-long ship around the vessel ahead and could see a fire had started. He called the U.S. Navy to tell them of the attack.

The maneuver in the Strait of Hormuz with drones and missiles overhead is the sort of quick thinking that’s proving vital to getting oil supplies to the global market as Washington and Tehran fail to reach an agreement on reopening the waterway to regular traffic.

The account of the incident, shared by a captain in his early 40s who declined to be identified while discussing commercially sensitive journeys, shows how and why those flows from the Middle East are rising largely under the watch of the U.S. military.

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