A not-for-profit, non-partisan organisation United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) has identified two vessels conducting an illegal ship-to-ship (STS) transfer of Iranian crude.
UANI posted a satellite image on the X platform – formerly Twitter – of the Honduras-flagged 27-year-old 300,361 dwt tanker Artemis III and the Panama-flagged 19-year-old 159,106 dwt Ocean Hermana conducting STS transfer in the Riau Archipelago.
After the image was posted to X on Tuesday, Malaysian authorities arrested the vessels which refused to cooperate with an inspection.
Back in November 2020, UANI compiled a list of 70 foreign vessels – otherwise known as the dark or shadow fleet – suspected of involvement in the illicit transfer of Iranian crude oil and petroleum products. In a new report by UANI from late September this year, the dark fleet used to carry Iranian oil has grown to 353.
From 2020 till today some of the vessels from the list have been decommissioned, sanctioned, changed flags due to UANI intervention, or even had major accidents.
Including vessels carrying sanctioned cargoes for Iran, Venezuela, and Russia the number of vintage vessels within the shadow fleet climbs to over 600 ships.
Malaysia, along with other Southeast Asian states, has become more wary of the threat posed by the ageing dark fleet. Those waters have had their fair share of dark fleet mishaps. Most recently, the 26-year-old 106,547 dwt aframax tanker Turba, part of the shadow fleet hauling Russian crude, was adrift in the Indian Ocean some 300 km west of Indonesia for several days.
More problematic incidents in the region include the explosion of the Pablo aframax in May and the grounding of the VLCC Young Yang last year. All three of these vessels are listed on the UANI shadow fleet list.
According to insurance firm Allianz, there were at least eight groundings, collisions or near misses involving tankers carrying sanctioned oil products in 2022 – the same number as in the previous three years.
