Egypt’s Petroleum Ministry has contained a blaze that broke out on two gas vessels at Damietta Port, even as maritime security firms maintain that a drone strike triggered the fire.
The Damietta Port fire began on Wednesday evening at the Mediterranean facility, according to a statement from Egypt’s Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources. The ministry said the fire affected a regasification vessel and a storage vessel, and that no injuries or fatalities were recorded.
Firefighting and security teams were deployed under the country’s approved emergency response plans, the ministry said, and the blaze was brought under control shortly afterwards. Petroleum Minister Karim Badawi travelled to the site once the incident was reported, where he oversaw containment efforts and confirmed that safety procedures were being followed by the relevant agencies.
The ministry’s account did not name a cause for the fire. It has urged media outlets and members of the public to rely only on its official statements rather than unverified reports circulating online.
However, British maritime security firm Ambrey said its initial assessment pointed to a drone striking the US owned floating storage and regasification unit Energos Winter while it was docked at the port. Reuters, citing Ambrey and separate trading sources, reported that the fire then spread to a second vessel, the Gaslog Salem.
A separate maritime risk group, Vanguard, gave a related but distinct account of the Damietta Port fire, saying the Energos Winter was struck on its starboard side by an unidentified projectile. Both assessments agree that the vessel caught fire and that the flames later reached the neighbouring tanker.
Port services firm Inchcape confirmed separately that two gas tankers had caught fire at the Egyptian port, corroborating the wider picture emerging from the Damietta Port fire. Crews aboard both vessels were evacuated, and no casualties were reported among them, according to Ambrey.
No individual or group has claimed responsibility for the suspected attack behind the Damietta Port fire. Egyptian officials have stopped short of describing the fire as the result of hostile action, and the cause remains formally unconfirmed.
The Energos Winter is a Marshall Islands flagged floating storage and regasification unit with a capacity of 138,250 cubic metres. It is owned by the US based firm Energos Infrastructure, while its technical, safety and commercial operations are handled by Wilhelmsen Ship Management.
The suspected strike comes against a backdrop of widening tension across the Middle East. Iranian state media had named Damietta two days earlier as a possible target for retaliation, following a Ukrainian strike on an Iranian vessel in the Caspian Sea. Ukraine said the targeted vessel had been used to transport weapons to Russia, while Tehran said one of its sailors was killed in that incident.
Asked about the Damietta Port fire during a White House briefing, US President Donald Trump said he had been briefed on the situation, describing it as little more than a continuation of existing hostilities. He did not confirm or deny that an attack had taken place, nor did he name any party as responsible.
Damietta hosts one of Egypt’s two liquefied natural gas plants and remains a significant node in the country’s energy export infrastructure, which is part of why the Damietta Port fire has drawn such close scrutiny from energy analysts. Any confirmed attack on the facility would mark a rare instance of the wider regional conflict reaching Egyptian territory and could raise fresh concerns for energy security across the eastern Mediterranean.
Egyptian authorities said emergency and technical teams were continuing to assess the damage from the Damietta Port fire and to establish its cause, with further updates expected from the Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources in the coming days. For now, the Damietta Port fire stands as an unresolved episode with implications well beyond the port itself.
