United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations said on Tuesday that a tanker had reported an external explosion on the vessel’s port side, close to the waterline, 60 nautical miles off Oman’s capital Muscat.
UKMTO said the vessel, identified as the Olympic Life, and its crew were safe, although the tanker reported some bunker fuel had been discharged into the sea. It said the cause of the incident was unknown.
According to MarineTraffic vessel-tracking data, the Greek-owned Very Large Crude Carrier was sailing past Muscat at around 0700 GMT, heading out of the Gulf of Oman, and was not carrying cargo.
The ship’s technical manager, Springfield Shipping, said the vessel was struck by an unidentified object at about 0920 GMT, but remained stable and operational.
“An initial assessment indicated that there was damage to one of the vessel’s bunker tanks. A sheen was reported in the water after the incident,” it said in a statement to Reuters, adding that the spill had since been contained.
The vessel is owned by Athens-based Olympic Shipping & Management, the successor to Olympic Management founded by late shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, according to the Onassis Foundation’s website.
(Reporting by Ahmed Elimam and Jana Choukeir; additional reporting by Nerijus Adomaitis in Oslo; editing by Bernadette Baum, Alison Williams, Rod Nickel)
It appears as though auto and home insurers have caught up, appropriately matching premium to risk in their portfolios.
According to a new report from insurance industry rating agency AM Best, rate increases for homeowners and private passenger auto insurance dropped in 2025 following several years of significant rate increases as insurers’ underwriting profits wound up in the red.
In 2025 the average approved rate increase for homeowners insurance was 8.3% compared with 13.5% in 2024. For auto, rates went up 3.7% in 2025 versus up 9.7% in 2024.
For five of the six years from 2018 to 2023, homeowners insurers netted underwriting losses but 2025 results “showed continued improvement as the industry produced an underwriting profit of more than $16 billion for the homeowners line, the first such profit in five years,” thanks to no hurricane land-falls and a “more willing” reinsurance market, AM Best said.
The graph above shows average direct loss ratios and the average approved rates for 10 states with the highest 2024 homeowners direct premiums written, representing about 54% of the homeowners market. Lower direct loss ratios reflected better catastrophe management, tighter underwriting, and adjusted risk appetites, AM Best said.
In auto, AM Best credits carriers’ “refined underwriting techniques and technological enhancements” was credited in improving loss and expense ratios to reduce the need for large rate increases. Auto insurers in the aggregate recorded an underwriting gain of nearly $29 billion in 2025 after posting a loss of nearly $17 billion just two years prior.
