Report: Crew of Kuwaiti Tanker Abandons Ship After Iranian Attack

Another tanker appears to have been attacked in the strait of Hormuz, this time off the eastern coast of the Musandam Peninsula.

At about 2010 hours UTC on Monday, multiple third parties reported receiving a VHF Channel 16 distress call from a tanker in the strait. The vessel's crew reported that they had been hit by an unknown projectile at a position about eight nautical miles to the northeast of Limah, Oman.

In an update early Tuesday, monitoring center UKMTO reported that the crew had abandoned ship and were adrift in a lifeboat, awaiting rescue.

Martin Kelly of EOS Risk Group has identified the vessel as the Kuwaiti product tanker Kaifan (IMO 9656046). He added that the Kaifan's crew had reported a drone or missile strike, resulting in an engine room fire - similar in pattern to the attack on the product tanker Kavomaleas, which suffered an Iranian strike over the weekend.

Seafarer risk and compensation

While generally owned by GCC countries or Western firms, the tankers serving the Gulf are crewed by personnel from seafarer-supplying nations, like the Philippines and India. To achieve adequate manning levels in the face of significant hazards, owners are offering substantial bonuses - sometimes up to half a year of pay for one round trip in and out of the Gulf, or roughly sixfold the monthly wage, according tod Bloomberg.

Crewmembers who accept these offers are taking a calculated risk, declining their legal right to disembark in safety in order to seize an opportunity for outsize earnings. For a typical able seaman on a foreign-flagged ship, the six-month bonus would equate to an extra $15,000 - nearly three times the average annual household income in the Philippines. For a master, the bonus would be worth an extra $60,000-80,000 or more, based on the market-price wage with an extra premium for tankers.