Fourteen ships, previously registered in the Pacific island of Tuvalu, transmitted data from September 24 to October 13 saying they had changed their names and were flying the Tanzania flag, according to data compiled by a unit of Colorado-based IHS Inc. The company maintains a global shipping database for the UN maritime agency.
“This must be a mistake,” Abdullah Kombo, director of planning, policy and research at the Tanzania Ministry of Infrastructure and Communications in Zanzibar told Bloomberg October 15. The following day he forwarded confirmation from his country’s ship registry that the vessels aren’t entitled to fly the Tanzanian flag.
Iranian tankers have been frequently switching flag states as the US and European Union tighten sanctions. Zanzibar, a semi-autonomous part of the United Republic of Tanzania, said August 10 it would stop registering Iranian vessels, and Tuvalu announced the same decision six days later.
The tankers are operated by the Tehran-based National Iranian Tanker Co. (NITC).
As of last week, nine of the tankers were going to Asia, according to the signals. One was in the Mediterranean heading for Turkey and the others were returning to the Persian Gulf. Nine of the vessels have depths in the water that indicate they likely have full cargoes on board. Eleven are very large crude carriers, each able to haul about 2 million barrels of oil.
Merchant ships transmit data such as location, destination, name and flag state through so-called automatic identification systems, designed to avoid collisions with other vessels and improve safety at sea. IHS maintains the database with information from ship registries, signals from carriers, classification societies and other sources, said Richard Hurley, a senior maritime data specialist at IHS.
NITC switched at least 10 tankers to Tanzania-Zanzibar from registries in Cyprus and Malta before the EU sanctions began July 1, IHS data show. Those ships are no longer registered there and no new Iranian tankers have been added since then, Kombo said.