Tanker Tracking

Forty days into the Biden Presidency, Iran had another strong month of crude oil and gas exports, hitting just over 1.4 million barrels per day (bpd), despite a slight overall drop from the previous month.

This month we spotted a Maersk-managed tanker, DIAMONDBACK, attempting to take covert delivery of Iranian fuel oil in yet another ship-to-ship (STS) transfer.

There continues to be a significant divergence in top-line figures for Iran’s oil and gas exports from the main tracking parties: Bloomberg, Kpler, OilX, Refinitiv, and TankerTrackers.com. Not only does this variance mar the accuracy of media reports, but it also presents a serious challenge to those trying to get a handle on the trajectory of the Iranian economy, given its oil revenue dependency.   

For two years, UANI has been painstakingly observing a single vessel known as “NAJAF.”  Unlike standard movement tracking, however, NAJAF never moves from its spot just offshore of the key Iraqi port of Khor al-Zubair, in the far north of the Persian Gulf.  NAJAF’s role is as a giant stationary ‘mixer,’ blending different oils in order to obscure Iranian origin, while other tankers collect the new illegal blend for onward export.

The world’s flag registries – crucial links in the chain of ocean-going commerce – deserve credit for moving decisively to thwart Iranian shipping subterfuge.  As documented in UANI’s November 12 blog post, “Stop the Hop,” the list of responsible registries is long: Comoros, the Cook Islands, Gabon, Hong Kong, Liberia, Mongolia, Panama, Palau, Sierra Leone, St.

Over the past 12 months, UANI has unearthed dozens of cases of foreign tankers in illegal clandestine operations, designed to help Iran skirt oil sanctions.

These findings have been presented to the world’s “flag registries,” which grant the licenses required for any large vessel to make international voyages.

The flag registries have stepped up.

They have launched investigations, conducted hearings, published new banned vessel lists for information sharing, and de-flagged vessels altogether.

On October 26, 2020, the Trump administration slapped counterterrorism sanctions on Iran’s Ministry of Petroleum, the National Iranian Oil Company and its tanker subsidiary, NITC.

Despite tightening U.S. sanctions, Iranian oil exports increased sharply in September. At the time of the U.S.

Last month the U.S. announced the successful disruption of a multimillion-dollar fuel shipment by Iran’s IRGC terrorist organization bound for Venezuela.

 Observed flows of Iranian crude oil and condensates rose slightly to 264k barrels per day (Bloomberg) in July compared to the previous month. However, there remains a huge discrepancy between what we are able to track and what Iran is still managing to export under the radar. According to Tanker Trackers, there is an estimated additional 860k bpd unaccounted for: that is, “destination unknown.”