An apparent plan by Iran and its shipping industry allies to blend US-licensed Iranian and Iraqi oil in 2020 was short-lived, says Tehran an efficient way to circumvent sanctions on oil exports, according to tanker trackers who say they have withdrawn in preference to
The Wall Street Journal last month linked a UAE-based businessman to a It reported that several companies connected through were involved.
Under this plan, the parties would disguise the Iranian origin of the blended oil and brand the product as made in Iraq to circumvent US sanctions targeting Iranian oil.
News reports cited one example of an operation in March 2020 in which the Iranian-owned tanker Polaris 1 transferred the refined product of Iranian fuel oil to another tanker carrying Iraqi oil. did. The second tanker, Babel, was then operated by Rhine Shipping DMCC, run by Iraqi-born British citizen and UAE-based businessman Salim Ahmed Said.
The Wall Street Journal attributed the report to company documents, shipping data, and people familiar with the matter. Said also issued a statement denying his company shipped Iranian oil in violation of US sanctions.
VOA showing it occupied the same berth (red image) of Iraq's offshore Al Basra oil terminal on 10 August 2022 has found additional evidence in allegations that Polaris 1 and Babel engaged in ship-to-ship transfers between March 17 and 19, 2020, in waters approximately 30 kilometers from Iraq's Al-Fau Peninsula. for.
Her two ships, similar to Polaris 1 and Babel, appear side-by-side in a satellite image taken on those dates and provided to her VOA by US company Planet Labs. increase.
Tanker Trackers. Sam Madani, co-founder of com and a Swedish-based researcher, told VOA that the ship's appearance in the photo is similar to that of two of his tankers in his database. Said it matches the picture.
Greek-based maritime analytics provider MarineTraffic is also a VOA with Babel's Automated Identification System (AIS) He said data from the transponder showed the ship was in the location seen in the Planet Labs photo on the date the photo was taken. Polaris 1's transponder was powered off from August 2019 until she was rebooted on March 20, 2020. According to data, the vessel was about 380 kilometers southeast of where the transfer with Babel was reported.
Tankers often switch off AIS transponders in recent years to hide their activities from scrutiny.
Tehran has long declined to comment on how it uses tankers to export oil. This is to avoid providing information to US sanctions enforcers and researchers who advocate stronger sanctions.
Madani and fellow tanker tracker Claire Jungmann, chief of staff for the United States advocacy group United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), told the VOA that regular attacks involving mixed Iranian and Iranian He said there were no signs of significant ship-to-ship transfers. Iraqi oil in the Persian Gulf since 2020. Both researchers said they believed Iran had dropped its plans.
"These shipments contained refined oil products and were in very small quantities," Madani said of his 2020 blending operation. The Wall Street Journal said the amount of Iranian fuel oil involved in the sale of the Polaris 1-Babel in March 2020 was worth her $9 million.
UANI said last month that from March 2021 to May 2022 he estimated Iran's revenues from crude oil, gas, and related by-products such as fuel oil to be $37.7 billion. rice field.
The 2020 oil blending business also began to gain public attention by the end of the year, prompting several parties to backtrack on plans.
One sign of that scrutiny was the October 23, 2020 Wall Street Journal report that unnamed US officials tanker said it routinely transfers crude to other ships just a few kilometers from Iraq's Al-Faw port as part of oil mixing operations. The report did not name the tanker.
UANI later named one of the tankers in a December 2020 blog postUANI had tracked in the Persian Gulf for two years, then named Najaf. It said the tanker was acting "as a giant stationary 'mixer', blending different oils to obscure their Iranian origins while other tankers collected and exported new illegal blends.
Jungman to VOA, Najaf's operator since February 2018 is Al-Iraqia Shipping Services & Oil Trading FZE (AISSOT),The Wall Street Journals The July 31st article states that they have shared an email and company address with businessman Said's company.
AISSOT was established in 2017 as a wholly owned subsidiary of the Arab Maritime Petroleum Transport Company (AMPTC), which is governed by the governments of nine member countries of the Organization of the Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries. According to the AMPTCwebsite, AISSOT was established to support Iraqi government oil exports.
On 13 September 2020,AISSOT issued a statement, stating that "neither AISSOT nor its affiliates, vessels or personnel have any "I was not involved in the transaction," he said.
However, on 25 November 2020, the Iraqi government's National Oil Marketing Authorityannounced on 31 October of that year that it would build a floating structure to store Iraqi fuel oil. It said it had stopped using Najaf as a tanker. Anyone who buys oil from Najaf after that date could face "legal consequences arising from trading in smuggled petroleum products."
According to Jungman, AISSOT itself announced on 30 December 2020 that he was no longer listed as Najaf's ship manager.
In his August 1 statement issued in response to The Wall Street, the journallatest reportAMPTC said he "knows nothing" about smuggling.
In a separate statement issued the same day, AISSOT noted Iraq that he continued to be a member and shareholder of AMPTC.
"There was too much discussion about [the blending scheme] and too much oversight," he told TankerTrackers. com's Madani said. "Also, I don't think the results were what the Iranians were hoping for. So they just changed things and experimented with new configurations of ship movements and oil loading."
Over the past two years, Jungman said, the experiment has seen Iran set up a shell company, significantly expand its tanker fleet under a foreign flag to mask Iranian ownership, and control the state-run Iranian Tanker Company's vessels. evaded U.S. sanctions targeting
Iran also equips its expanded fleet of tankers with AIS spoofing devices that can transmit false data about vessel positions to make tracking difficult.
Jungmann and Madani say more than 200 of her oil tankers are under control in Iran. The most active of these are 20 to 30 very large crude oil carriers with a capacity of 2 million barrels. Jungman added.
He is one of the recent examples of impersonation shared by VOA, Madani said that a tanker formerly called Babel but now called "Molecule" On Aug. 10 he said he sent AIS data. Iraqi offshore al-Basra oil was docked at his terminal.
However, Madani shared a satellite image of the European Space Agency's (ESA) offshore terminal in Iraq on Aug. 10. He said that another tanker named Ephesus was docked at the same location indicated by his AIS on the Molecule. of the latter ship.
Instead, another ESA satellite photo shared by Madani from the same date, he said, was the molecule loading fuel oil at the Iranian port of Bandar-e-Mashar, about 100 kilometers to the northeast.
AIS spoofing and counterfeit bills of lading allow shippers loading oil in Iranian ports to claim that the oil came directly from Iraqi or Omani ports. Jungmann said that unlike mixing Iranian and Iraqi oil through ship-to-ship shipments, the AIS spoof would allow Iran to trade with Iraqi customs and the owners and operators of tankers carrying Iraqi oil.
"The Iranians are basically cutting all these people off, and they're cutting costs involving Iraq," she added. Then they can generate income for themselves," said Jungmann.
A report by UANI of June identified impersonation and other deceptions. He urged the international shipping industry to tighten controls on tankers and shipping companies engaged in the conduct.Iran has pledged to keep exporting oil as long as it can, and its biggest customer, China, has urged the United Nations Security Council to It continues to import, ignoring U.S. sanctions without authorization.
Since June, the Biden administration has ruled out that Tehran is delivering and importing authorized Iranian oil. Three sanctions have been imposed on companies accused of helping them sell. The latest sanctions he announced on August 1st.
Jungmann welcomed the measure, but he said it was not enough to target ship owners and operators.
"They have ways of getting around sanctions. They can create new companies and continue to operate," Jungmann said. "Targeting additional tankers carrying Iranian oil would be a better way for ports to crack down by making it more difficult for those ships to dock and offload oil. ' she added.
Asked by the VOA whether the Biden administration planned to sanction more oil tankers under Iranian control, the State Department cited the August 1 sanctions announcement, but said the issue was and sent further questions to the Treasury Department. There was no immediate response from the Treasury to the same VOA question.
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