Iraq Kept Fuel-Oil Storage Off Al-Faw

Iraq’s oil ministry said the Panama-flagged New Andros was chartered by the Iraqi Oil Tankers Company and designated for storing fuel oil. A fire started after the hit. Rescue boats put it out. The ministry reported minor hull damage and no cargo in the water. Port officials speaking to Reuters counted 22 crew, all safe. Greek reporting named Invincible Shipping Services as registered owner and New Shipping, tied to Adamantios Polemis, as manager. Two of the crew were Greek.

What the wires already filed

Overnight, UKMTO said merchant ships in the northern Gulf and Gulf of Oman took disabling fire during military activity. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said it had hit ten ships near Hormuz after the United States sank five Iranian tankers. New Andros sat hundreds of kilometres from that strait, 28 nautical miles southeast of Al-Faw. The ministry called the source unknown. UKMTO called it an unknown projectile. Iraqi officials and some ship-tracking accounts called it a drone. The ministry already named the ship’s job: store fuel oil.

Peninsula is on a different ship. The National reported that charterer as Hercules Star, a Gibraltar-flag products tanker hit about 44 kilometres off the UAE, with one crew dead and one missing. Mixing the two names files an IOTC storage hull as a bunker-trader casualty.

Why the ship was in the STS box

If attack risk on commercial ships was already high, why was New Andros doing ship-to-ship work in Iraqi territorial waters?

Because the charter required it to sit there. A Shafaq security source placed the hit in the ship-to-ship transfer area used to move cargo between hulls off Basra. The ministry’s storage designation matches that geography: a VLCC used as a floating tank for Iraqi fuel oil, not a laden transit run through Hormuz. Southern Iraq still has to get residual fuel oil off the coast. Berths do not hold two million barrels. The STS box does.

The MARAD warning prices transit. IOTC’s charter prices barrels that have to wait off Al-Faw.

U.S. Maritime Advisory 2026-004, covering the Persian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz, and Gulf of Oman, said Iranian attacks on commercial shipping remained high and told U.S.-flag ships to run a pre-voyage risk assessment. It was set to expire on 9 September — the same calendar day as the strike. The advisory does not lease Iraq another storage hull. On 16 July an unidentified drone hit the Liberian-flagged Supreme Prosperity at Basra Oil Port. Anyone who kept a storage VLCC off Faw after that date had a Basra-port hit already on the file.

UKMTO’s overnight “disabling fire” note is a separate file from the Al-Faw projectile. Treating New Andros as splash damage from Hormuz fighting collapses two incident numbers into one.

What still gets the price wrong

War-risk desks that quote the strait and treat the Khawr Abd Allah as a quiet annex will miss the next storage hull. P&I language written after seven clubs walked away from Hormuz still has to name Al-Faw STS and IOTC storage by function, not by flag. MOU tape that priced a cleaner Iran does not relocate two million barrels of Iraqi fuel oil.

The test that would kill this reading is simple. If IOTC or the owner posts a charter and AIS showing New Andros was transiting, empty, or already clear of the STS box, the storage answer is wrong. If the oil ministry’s investigation names a hit during a loading that had not started, Shafaq’s transfer-area line is wrong. Until those records move, the constraint is the Iraqi storage charter: the barrels had to sit off Faw, and the ship sat with them.