A growing number of tankers involved in Iran and Venezuela's illicit oil trade appear to be swapping their cargoes off West Africa, according to ship tracking data, as the US tightens its grip on sanctions-busting by Tehran.
For the first time in over than a year, vessel tracking data has picked up a spate of ship-to-ship transfers between the two oil producers in the Gulf of Guinea, suggesting the lack of oversight in the region - long known for illegal trade, smuggling and piracy - could have made it a cog in concealing trade flows.
According to an analysis of S&P Global Commodities at Sea and Maritime Intelligence Risk Suite data, the Gulf of Guinea appeared to host 19 ship-to-ship (STS) transfers between May and October involving US-sanctioned entities, namely Iran's national tanker company, NITC, the country's Rahbaran Omid Darya Ship Management Co, and Venezuela's state oil firm PDVSA.
None of the 13 tankers identified had been active in West Africa since 2021, while neither country had appeared to carry out any previous transshipment in the Gulf of Guinea since at least January 2023.
With little refining capacity of its own, West Africa is an unlikely marketplace for Iranian or Venezuelan crude, typically directed to China, India or the Middle East. Yet its active tanker business and weaker maritime enforcement capacity has made it a prime transshipment location for the shadow fleet to obscure its oil flows, experts say.
According to MIRS data, 91 STS transactions between oil tankers over 27,000 DWT took place off the Gulf of Guinea in September, spiking 65% year-on-year. The volume of activity - mostly legitimate -- means that illicit activity can more easily fly under the radar.
Nigeria, West Africa's largest economy, notoriously loses as much as 400,000 b/d of crude to oil theft, with some volumes smuggled out of the country, according to analysts.
Looser regulatory oversight has also made Senegal a key conduit for Russian diesel redirected to Brazil, said Mark Esposito, senior research analyst at S&P Global Commodity Insights.
Isaac Levi, a specialist on Russian energy policy at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, said that new areas including Togo, Nigeria and Senegal have become prominent shadow tanker hubs since naval exercises in Greece have stamped out previous activity happening in the European hub.
Recent sightings of Iranian tankers in West African waters have come as around 50 ships are put on the US sanctions list for transporting the country's cargoes so far this year, including some used to fund Yemen-based Houthi militants, partly for their attacks on merchant ships in the Red Sea.
With a history of West African transshipment, Venezuela's PDVSA appears to have refocused on the trade route after its period of relaxed US sanctions came to an unceremonious end in April.
Under previous sanctions, the US Treasury discovered the state oil company laundering its crude oil at offshore Lome, and accused Russia's Rosneft in 2020 of facilitating STS loadings from a 2-million barrel Venezuelan cargo to three tankers bound for Asia.
Four years on, one of the implicated VLCCs, since resold, recently cropped up off Ghana June 5. Kitakaze, formerly the 'Trident Tenacity', loaded from the Iranian-operated Tabukan before sailing on to China, according to CAS data. The origin of the crude was kept unclear, with both ships appearing to loiter around the Gulf of Guinea for around a year before the transfer. CAS flagged multiple instances of unreliable and sometimes duplicate AIS ship tracking signals for Kitakaze over that period.
The Djibouti-flagged VLCC was sold by former owner Mercantile & Maritime trading before April 2020, according to a statement on the company's website. Commodity Insights could not find contact details for its current listed owner 'Trident Tenacity Ltd'. Mercantile & Maritime was not available for comment.
Eyeing new outlets for its oil, Venezuela has also sought to restore its oil ties with Iran. Under a 20-year cooperation plan signed in 2022, the countries had engaged in a crude-for-condensate swaps deal, making Iran Venezuela's largest oil supplier as it shipped roughly 50,000 b/d condensate, according to CAS.
Relaxed US sanctions on Venezuela put pressure on the relationship last year as it turned to alternative trade partners, but traders say that the two countries have made recent steps to rebuild their trade links.
In three instances July-October, CAS and MIRS data showed direct STS transactions between PDVSA and NITC tankers. However, with three instances appearing to take place on land, experts have flagged a high risk of transponder manipulation.
Neither PDVSA or NITC were available for comment.
With location spoofing often at play in the case of shadow tanker activity, it is almost impossible to verify whether transactions have actually occurred.
For Iranian crude oil, West Africa makes an unlikely transshipment hub for supplies mostly directed to markets in Asia, said Claire Jungman, Chief of Staff a UANI, who suspected transponder manipulation as the most likely explanation for recent activity.
According to UANI estimates, Iran shipped some 1.7 million barrels per day of oil in September, of which around 94% was delivered to China. The latest Platts OPEC+ survey put Iranian crude production up 7% year-on-year in September, creating added pressure to protect its logistics network from secondary US sanctions.
The use of 'ghost' ships, or out-of-service vessels, to fake shipping activity appears to have occurred in several recent incidents in the Gulf of Guinea.
Pablo, a 27-year old Aframax declared a "total loss" off the coast of Malaysia last year, appeared to make a revival in October and STS with a PDVSA tanker. Sam, formerly Zoya 1, also cropped up off Ghana in September after the Palau-flagged VLCC was wrecked by a fire in 2022.
Commodity Insights could not find any contact details for Sam's registered owner, Ancient Shipping Industries. Pablo has no listed owner.
Captain Mohit Ranjan, operations manager at Omni Offshore Terminals, which operates the FSO UOTE, insisted that the ship had been laid up in anchorage in Malaysia for the best part of a decade, despite the ship appearing to STS with a PDVSA tanker Oct. 3
"For the last 10 years she's not gone west of Nepal," he said, while the company's insurer suggested a tracking error or AIS theft.
The suspicious signals suggest increasingly sophisticated tactics to blur new trade routes cropping up for sanctioned producers to protect their remaining logistics networks. "By choosing a location far from the Persian Gulf, Iran adds a layer of complexity to the tracking of its ships," said UANI's Jungaman.