A ship using a false ID stolen from a scrapped vessel has begun operating a shuttle service of what is believed to be Iranian oil in defiance of sanctions.
Arsenio Longo, the founder of Huax, told The National, the appearance of what is called a zombie ship marks the first time a vessel has been used to transport oil to tankers off Oman and on for further export since the Middle East war began.
The doppelganger vessel is using the international ship identifiers, including image and name, taken from a ship called Jamal. The scrapped ship's photograph is continuing to be used on maritime trackers.
It marks a new development in the tactics being used by ships to disguise their identity to transit the Strait of Hormuz.
Mr Longo explained that once through the strait it discharges its cargo in “likely via ship-to-ship transfer to vessels that are waiting on the Omani side and cannot enter the Gulf”.
“Those vessels then move the cargo onward wherever the final destination is, without ever having to transit Hormuz themselves,” he said. “The zombie vessel is the bridge across the Strait of Hormuz checkpoint.”
The use of zombie ships has up to now been primarily seen in the Venezuelan sanctioned oil trade.
“This is something we haven't seen before in this region, so for us it was very interesting,” said Mr Longo.
Mr Longo said using by comparing the draught of the ship, which indicates how low it sits in the water, that was transmitted by Automatic Identification System (AIS), he concluded that it had off loaded what is likely its cargo of oil off the coast of Oman.
“That kind of transfer, a significant volume, conducted at anchor or via ship-to-ship in an open anchorage zone, is consistent with crude oil products,” he explained.
The same data shows that water ballast has been loaded into the ship’s tanks and it is heading back through the Strait of Hormuz in what Mr Longo said was “a structured shuttle operation”.
Data shared with The National by Huax shows that the Zombie ship sailed to an anchorage area in open water off the coast of Oman opposite the port of Sohar and discharged its cargo between March 21 and 23.
The latest position on the Vessel Finder ship tracker shows it transiting the Strait of Hormuz, on a course heading for the Iranian city of Bandar Abbas, near to where oil terminals are located.
“What makes it a shuttle rather than a one-off is that the vessel is now heading back in, presumably to load again,” said Mr Longo.
“A zombie vessel making repeat laden runs through Hormuz, discharging in the Sohar area via what our broader data set suggests is a ship-to-ship transfer zone, and returning for reload.”
Mr Longo stressed that Huax had not picked up an AIS signal that can definitively locate the ships starting point but he added that “the presumption is that it is an Iranian port”.
A zombie vessel is a ship that broadcasts on its AIS the unique International Maritime Organisation registration number, name, call sign and flag, of another vessel that is scrapped or inactive.
The IMO number is the primary identifier used by port state control authorities, sanctions screening systems, insurance underwriters and compliance databases.
By broadcasting a clean IMO number, a zombie vessel can pass automated checks that would otherwise flag its true identity.
“The zombie identity works precisely because no one is checking the physical vessel against the digital record in real time.”
Mr Longo said the zombie vessel was assuming the identity of a Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) tanker, which he said also marks a new development and was a new tactic to evade sanctions in the Strait of Hormuz.
“A vessel broadcasting an LNG carrier IMO number that is not on a sanctions list will pass most automated screens without triggering manual review.
“The use of an LNG carrier identity to transit Hormuz is the first known example of this technique being applied specifically to gain Hormuz passage.”
The use of zombie ships emerged in April last year as a means for operators to transport oil from Venezuela, which was under sanctions from the United States.
The tactic has its origins in the use of dark fleets, which are uninsured tankers, primarily used by Russia and Iran to circumvent western sanctions on oil exports. These ships use methods such as turning off AIS tracking, changing ownership frequently, and ship-to-ship transfers to hide the oil's origin.
The first reported zombie ship was named the Varada arrived Malaysia after a two-month voyage from Venezuela. Further investigation revealed its ID was that of a ship scrapped in Bangladesh in 2017.
The real Jamal was built in Japan in 2020 and former operator Resurgence Ship Management, which is based in Mumbai, India confirmed the ship had been scrapped at the Alang shipyard in India. Video shows the moment it arrived there in October last year.
Resurgence Ship Management told The National: “We are not aware if there's someone else using the same name and IMO number, but definitely, this vessel was scraped. We don’t have anything to do with this vessel any more.”
