Tanker Tracking

Iranian exports of crude and condensate fell in June to their lowest since February 2020. According to Bloomberg, the total observed shipments of crude and condensate were 133kb/d in June compared to 293k b/d in May. 

News in May was dominated by Iran’s dramatic and ultimately successful delivery of 1.5 million barrels of gasoline to Venezuela, defying U.S. sanctions and giving the White House a poke in the eye.

Iran’s observed exports of crude oil fell by more than half in April with just three tankers confirmed, compared to ten in March. According to Bloomberg Tanker Tracking, the total observed shipments of crude were 204k barrels per day (b/d) in April, vs. 440 b/d in March.

              Syrian oil imports from Iran continues to be a significant hole in the U.S. sanctions wall - and the hole certainly got bigger in March.

As Iranian tankers continue to evade tracking, the observed figure for February exports to Syria was just 34,000 barrels per day. According to Bloomberg, Syria imported 53,000 bpd in the previous month of January.

China continues to import north of 200,000 barrels of oil per day (bpd) from Iran but there are indications that 2020 could be the year that the U.S. finally gets Iranian crude exports to effectively zero (illicit smuggling to Syria notwithstanding).  Led by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, U.S.

To wrap up UANI’s ship-tracking in 2019, in December the vessel monitoring team identified a new Iranian crude oil ship to ship (STS) transfer location off the coast of the Indonesian island of Karimunbesar. Karimunbesar Island is one of the islands in the Riau Islands chain, just south of Singapore and west of the Indonesian island of Batam.

November again saw a flurry of Iranian ships steaming through the Suez Canal and then immediately switching off their Automatic Identification System (AIS) tracking transponders -- a typical method to avoid detection and sanctions enforcement as they seek to unload oil to the Syrian regime. Between August 2018 to July 2019 Syria received 17 million barrels of Iranian crude, according to Tanker Trackers.

Iran’s crude and condensate exports rose slightly in October from the previous month with shipments going to China and Syria. China was again the primary purchaser of Iranian oil. Ship signals were lost for most of the country’s tanker fleet, making accurate assessments difficult. 

Iran’s recorded crude exports fell in September to the lowest since July 2016, although China remains the one big outlier and principal purchaser, having imported an average of 171,000 barrels per day over the month. Overall, it seems like good news for U.S. authorities trying to reduce Iranian oil exports to “zero.”