Drones struck two tankers in the Black Sea near Bulgaria on Tuesday, in the first attack on shipping in the NATO member’s exclusive economic zone.
The strikes come amid wars in Europe and the Middle East in which commercial shipping is regularly targeted, raising fears that the supply of endangered tankers could become the next energy bottleneck: Traffic in the Strait of Hormuz has largely rebounded, but only at great risk to tankers, 20 of which have been struck in the last month, suggesting recovery could be unsustainable.
The Iran conflict began “with a crude crisis… [that] turned into a product crisis,” the head of the world’s largest independent oil trader told the Financial Times. “It is turning into a shipping crisis.”
