{"id":627,"date":"2025-05-10T11:06:21","date_gmt":"2025-05-10T11:06:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/?p=627"},"modified":"2025-05-10T11:06:21","modified_gmt":"2025-05-10T11:06:21","slug":"zombie-tankers-take-on-identity-of-old-usa-ships-to-allow-iran-and-china-oil-trade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/zombie-tankers-take-on-identity-of-old-usa-ships-to-allow-iran-and-china-oil-trade\/","title":{"rendered":"ZOMBIE TANKERS, TAKE ON IDENTITY OF OLD USA SHIPS TO ALLOW IRAN AND CHINA OIL TRADE!"},"content":{"rendered":"
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US-Sanctioned Zombie Tanker Exposes Dark Trade Between Tehran and Beijing<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Just over a week after Bloomberg exposed the rise of \u201czombie\u201d or \u201cphantom\u201d<\/a>\u00a0oil tankers\u2014cargo ships that hijack the identities of scrapped ships to evade U.S. sanctions\u2014another\u00a0clandestine maritime supply chain has emerged,\u00a0this time revealing how Iranian crude continues flowing into China despite mounting pressure from the Trump administration.<\/p>\n

Bloomberg<\/a>\u00a0reports that\u00a0a U.S.-sanctioned \u201czombie\u201d tanker\u2014Gather View, disguised as a scrapped vessel named Global\u2014delivered 2 million barrels of Iranian oil to a government-run port in Shandong despite a provincial ban on sanctioned ships. Ship tracking data showed the\u00a0zombie tanker\u2019s port call occurred in late April.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>The\u00a0clandestine maritime supply chain reveals an\u00a0increasingly desperate\u00a0Tehran and China\u2019s \u201cteapot\u201d refiners, defying U.S. sanctions and allowing\u00a0the Iranian oil trade to remain alive.<\/p>\n

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In a separate report, Reuters reported that U.S. sanctions on\u00a0two small Chinese teapots have created\u00a0difficult operating conditions for those refineries.<\/p>\n

President Trump has been seeking \u201cmaximum pressure\u201d on Iran by disrupting Tehran\u2019s crude export operations with sanctions over its nuclear program.<\/p>\n

In March, the U.S. sanctioned Shandong Shouguang Luqing Petrochemical and Shandong Shengxing Chemical in April.<\/p>\n

Beijing has previously rejected unilateral sanctions and defends legitimate trade with Iran. China has become Iran\u2019s largest crude buyer.<\/p>\n

\u201cIran needs to be creative because the pace for them to find new tankers cannot really match the pace of US sanctions,\u201d Muyu Xu, senior crude oil analyst at analytics firm Kpler in Singapore, told Bloomberg, adding, \u201cSo that\u2019s why we\u2019re seeing them come up with this tactic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last month, Bloomberg identified\u00a0zombie tankers<\/a>\u00a0hauling Venezuelan crude as these new tactics to operate dark fleet operations become more prevalent with foreign adversaries of the U.S.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

US-Sanctioned Zombie Tanker Exposes Dark Trade Between Tehran and Beijing Just over a week after Bloomberg exposed the rise of \u201czombie\u201d or \u201cphantom\u201d\u00a0oil tankers\u2014cargo ships that hijack the identities of scrapped ships to evade U.S. sanctions\u2014another\u00a0clandestine maritime supply chain has emerged,\u00a0this time revealing how Iranian crude continues flowing into China despite mounting pressure from the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=627"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":628,"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627\/revisions\/628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}