entered the Persian Gulf in early February, supposedly heading to the Basra terminal, off the coast of Iraq. Then it turned off its transponders and went dark. Ten days later it resumed transmissions, sailed back through the Strait of Hormuz to Fujairah, in the United Arab Emirates, and emptied its tank. It then reversed towards Basra, went dark again, reappeared and delivered oil to Fujairah once more. In the past eight months, vessels followed this pattern more than 60 times.
The risk to businesses is rising, for two reasons. First, the use of sanctions has grown more complex since Marc Rich, the founder of Glencore, a huge trader, was indicted in 1983 for working with Iran, which was then holding Americans hostage . Last year America imposed sanctions on about 1,500 people, firms, vessels and other entities, nearly triple the number in 2016. The past six months have been particularly eventful.
Such methods have helped Iran and Russia transport oil to Syria, American officials say. In 2018 North Korea managed to import refined petroleum far in excess of the level allowed by multilateral sanctions. The situation in Venezuela is different—technically, America’s sanctions still allow foreigners to do business with the country. But fear that sanctions will expand mean that traditional trading partners are scarce.
A main determinant of Venezuela’s output, for instance, is access to the diluent it needs to blend with its heavy crude. A firm called Clipper Data has noted Russian ships delivering diluent to vessels near Malta, which then transport it to Venezuela. Kpler, a French rival, uses satellite images of shadows on lids of storage tanks to help estimate the volume of oil inside.
need a second referendum
Iran is not even a colony of America like foreign & distant Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico, & Guam with their own blood & the soil natives of many many thousands of years. Can Russia or China do the same to America?