Oman tightened maritime rules for foreign ships in its territorial waters. Foreign-flagged vessels operating under navigation licences must keep AIS switched on at all times, declare weapons and ammunition, and obtain departure certificates, under Ministerial Decision No. 30/2026 from the transport ministry. The Oman Maritime Security Centre announcement follows reported AIS anomalies and GPS jamming and spoofing around the Strait of Hormuz; non-compliance can draw fines, licence suspension or revocation. The rules target ships carrying out licensed activities in Omani waters, not routine port callers.
The Panama Canal expanded advance transit reservations for the 2027 dry season. The Canal Authority’s Long-term Slot Allocation program will cover transits from January 3 through April 3, 2027, and for the first time extends to the Panamax locks alongside the Neopanamax locks. The Neopanamax program offers 270 slots across 36 packages; the new Panamax pilot offers 288 slots across 51 packages, each working out to three reserved transits a day, allocated by sealed-bid rounds on November 17 and 24. The move continues the Canal’s shift toward predictable booking after the 2023-24 drought exposed its freshwater vulnerability.
Hackers breached the propulsion system of a US-bound oil tanker. FBI and Coast Guard investigators found evidence that hackers gained temporary access to the propulsion system of the VLCC VL Prosperity as it approached the Texas coast this summer, Bloomberg reported, a rare and invasive breach into a ship’s operational systems. The Coast Guard and FBI boarded the fully laden carrier, bound for Galveston, in August after it lost communications; the ship remains anchored offshore Galveston. US agencies were tracking cyber threats against nearly 20 shipping vessels worldwide by September.
G7 leaders issued a statement on global energy security and market stability (European Commission DG Energy, October 5). The statement is the political frame for the week’s energy diplomacy, but contained no new supply commitments; the diesel-release arithmetic remains constrained by inventories.
Kuwait’s oil output is at 75 percent of prewar levels as Hormuz transits rise (gCaptain, October 5). Context: physical loadings continue to recover even as the tanker campaign escalates, which is why crude prices have refused a war premium.
The US blockade has bottled up dozens of Iranian tankers (gCaptain, October 6, citing a nonprofit report). Context: CENTCOM redirected its 130th commercial vessel on October 5, destroyed 13 vessels over 12 weeks tied to the blockade or the IRGC shadow network, and disabled three non-compliant vessels.
An Indian port set a national record by handling nearly 1 million tonnes in a single day (Marine Insight, October 6). The record is a data point on Indian port throughput growth rather than a market-moving event, and the specific port and cargo mix were not detailed in the report.
EIA released its weekly retail fuel prices for October 5 (EIA, October 6). Routine weekly data on retail gasoline and on-highway diesel; the series bears watching into the winter fuels season rather than producing a story this week.