Iran has seized a second oil tanker. I thought I’d write up some notes on the story so far.
The US and Iran aren’t friendly. We’ve long sanctioned Iran oil, preventing it from being sold to U.S.-friendly buyers. Obama lifted those sanctions in 2015 under a nuclear enrichment deal, and Trump reimposed those sanctions in 2018.
In 2018, a court found Iran provided support to al-Qaeda, forcing them to pay $3.61 billion in restitution. This was largely meaningless, as there was no way to enforce this.
On January 16 of 2022 (last year), oil tanker Virgo appears to pick up a load of Iranian oil from Iran’s main distribution terminal on Khargh Island.
On February 13 of 2022, the Virgo meets another oil tanker Suez Rajan on the open sea and transfers the oil.
This is second ship is owned by U.S. company Oaktree Capital Management (through a subsidiary, Fleetscape). I think it’s obvious it was trying to evade U.S. sanctions, hiding the provenance of the oil in order to sell it to U.S.-friendly customers.
However, we live in the golden age of OSINT where such things can be tracked. We can track the GPS location of all oil tankers in real-time via websites. We can also get satellite pictures of the oil tankers in near real time. Sometime simply has to go through the data to find such ship-to-ship meetups.
An advocacy group United Against Nuclear Iran did just that. This is detailed in this February 17 of 2022 AP story.
Thus, in March 4 of 2022, a court orders the cargo to be seized, since it’s a U.S. owned ship. The tanker has sat in Singapore for the last year as the case has gone through courts.
On April 6 of 2023 (this year), the Suez Rajan set sail. It turned off its GPS tracker on April 22, but appeared to be heading to the United States.
On April 28 of 2023, Iran seized the oil tanker Advantage Sweet which was carrying oil bound for the United States (on behalf of Chevron). Iran seizes an oil tanker every 6 months, so this isn’t necessarily tied to anything specific, but many have made the claim it’s in retaliation for the Suez Rajan seizure. Other’s claim it’s simply the long simmering issue of U.S. sanctions. Iran, of course, claims neither is true, that instead the ship had collided with an Iranian boat.
On May 4 of 2023, Iran seized another oil tanker Niovi. This has raised tensions, and where most of us have really started paying attention to this story.
A big part of these stories is the owner/management structure of the shipping industry.
The owners of the ships are often shell companies, which is nothing nefarious, its standard way ships are owned. The owners are usually finance companies. They often don’t matter in our stories, they are in the business of finance, not transporting oil. They’ll be just as surprised to find their ships transporting Iran crude as anybody else.
The managers or operators of the vessels are quite different companies. But still, they only transport oil, they don’t buy and sell it.
Then there are the companies actually buying/selling the oil, such as the case of Advantage Sweet, where the oil was apparently purchased/to-be-purchased by Chevron. This can get complicated, because there’s often a difference between buying the oil in theory (like futures and options) and actually dealing with physical oil. Also, there are middlemen involved, logistics companies sitting between the traders and the managers/operators.
Then there’s the crews, which are almost always multinationals. Indians and Filipinos make up a large percentage of the workforce (the Advantage Sweet was primary crewed by Indians). However, half the ships officers are European or Chinese.
I search the IMO database below for the particulars of each ships. This just gives the official information. There are also companies that trade in real-time tracking of the ship locations, cargos, and destinations. An example is Fleetmon.com, which gives some free information with a registered account. I can’t find any that give real-time info for free, though.
“Virgo”
Flag: Panama
Owner/Operator: Suriname shell company
Cargo: Iran oil
“Suez Rajan”
Flag: Marshall Islands
Owner: U.S. shell company Fleetscape, subsidiary of Oaktree Capital Management
Operator: Greek company Empire Navigation Inc.
Cargo: Iran oil transfered at see
“Advantage Sweet”
Flag: Marshall Islands
Owner: Chinese shell company
Operator: Turkish company Geden Lines (aka. Genel Denizcilik)
Cargo: Shipment on behalf of Chevron headed to Houston
“Niovi”
Flag: Panama
Owner: Liberian shell company Grand Financing Co.
Operator: Greek company Smart Tankers Inc.
Cargo: empty (you can see in the picture above it’s riding high in the water)
"Iran oil transfered at see" maybe "at sea"?
sorry for being OCD. love the details