25 July 2024 Lloyd's List
IT is no secret that tankers engaged in sanctions trades are masters at deceptive shipping practices, from manipulation of Automatic Identification System signals to document forgery. Those that end up under US sanctions usually double down on their manipulation of AIS, which makes tracking their activity — and the impact of sanctions — all the trickier.
What is clear though is that while sanctions raise cumbersome obstacles for tankers, they are not a kiss of death for their commercial endeavours.
Lloyd’s List tracked 11 tankers sanctioned by the US for Iran links between January and March and found the majority disappeared, manipulating their locations. Some hoisted false flags to continue trading.
Seven of the tracked tankers have emitted false location data via AIS since being designated.
Very large crude carrier Moonbay (IMO: 9230907), formerly Eternal Fortune, began manipulating its location just days after being designated on March 6.
AIS data shows the ship anchored off Vietnam from March 10 to April 18 The vessel is moving in an impossible pattern during this period, a telltale sign of AIS manipulation. Satellite imagery verifies the transmitted location is false.
Moonbay (IMO: 9230907) spoofing its location from March 10 to April 18:
Source: Lloyd’s List Intelligence / Seasearcher, Planet Labs PBC
Some tankers are still falsifying their location months after they were designated, pretending to sail in circles around the same spot, such as Sincere 02(IMO: 9226011), Molecule (IMO: 9209300) and Fortune Galaxy (IMO: 9257010).
This set of tankers routinely engaged in deceptive shipping practices prior to designation by Ofac, but this activity was more targeted to hide illicit activity, such as dark ship-to-ship transfer or port calls in Iran, rather than broadly trying to disguise their whereabouts over long periods of time.
In the lead-up to being sanctioned the 11 tankers were tracked with AIS data making some 116 calls to ports and anchorages in China, Iraq, the UAE and Malaysia.
While many of these calls were not legitimate, rather part of location manipulation techniques, the post-sanction activity remains a distinct shift away from these “normal” patterns with just 10 arrivals to ports and anchorages recorded, legitimate or otherwise.
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