Iran’s cat-and-mouse game with the US has played out in the world’s media through the saga of its disappearing oil tankers. Switching names, reflagging, ship-to-ship transfers and switching off transponders are just some of the tactics used by Iran’s fleet of tankers to attempt to evade sanctions.
The Adrian Darya-1, originally named the Grace 1, seized by the UK authorities in Gibraltar and accused of attempting to smuggle oil to Syria in violation of EU sanctions, became the most notorious case of tanker deception this summer. Held for over a month, the vessel was released on 15 August after Tehran provided guarantees that the ship would not deliver its cargo of crude oil to Syria.
But it was TankerTrackers.com, a small US company using MarineTraffic and visual satellite data from Planet which tracked the vessel’s movements across the Mediterranean and broke the news that the fully laden Adrian Darya-1 was sitting in the anchorage of Baniyas, just off the Syrian coast.
TankerTrackers.com co-founder Samir Madani says that over the past year the number of ships switching off their AIS has grown significantly.
“Last year less than 10% of Iranian ships were going dark. Today it’s the overwhelming majority. Half of the tankers trading in and out of Venezuela are also going dark and switching off their AIS.”
But according to Samir Madani, despite the US sanctions, Iran is still managing to move half a million barrels of crude oil a day and 100-200K barrels of refined products.
“The refined products are chemically untraceable, but we think that they’re mainly being sold to regional buyers,” he says.
An important element in TankerTrackers.com detective work is keeping tabs on the Iranian vessels’ MMSI numbers, via its AIS transponders. The Maritime Mobile Service Identity (MMSI) is a unique nine-digit number for identifying a ship. Unlike the IMO number which remains unchanged throughout the vessel’s life, the MMSI code changes if the flag state changes. Noting these changes via MarineTraffic alerted the TankerTrackers.com team to flag changes instantly.
TankerTrackers.com is a good example of a company which is making full use of MarineTraffic data, its alerts, geo-fencing capabilities, historical data and combining it with other data sets and good old-fashioned leg work.
“We like MarineTraffic data and the site’s features a lot,” says Samir Madani.
Founded in 2016, TankerTrackers.com started as a hobby for Samir Madani. Fast-forward three years and the former telecoms and consumer electronics supplier is now providing a mix of corporate and retail customers including oil traders and the general public with good quality data and insight into the movement of the world’s oil.
“We translate these tanker movements into barrels and the service is growing week by week. We just want a transparent oil market for the benefit of those who trade it.”
Samir Madani will be sharing his insights into tracking tankers and deliver a live-tracking session at the MarineTraffic event in Houston on 20 November 2019.