Dark Fleet: The Illicit Trade of Sanctioned Oil

The dark fleet thrives as sanctions fail to effectively curb illicit oil trade in the South China Sea.

### Dark Fleet: The Illicit Oil Trade in the South China Sea
* 👁 "Someone is looking out, watching us," as we uncover a significant cluster of **dark fleet vessels** operating in the South China Sea, engaging in the trade of **sanctioned oil**.
* 🚢 This area, a hub for aging tankers, facilitates the movement of **hundreds of millions of barrels of illicit oil**, often **without insurance** and in **defiance of international law**.
* 🔥 A notable incident in 2023 involved the tanker Pablo, which suffered a **catastrophic accident**, highlighting the **human cost and risks** associated with these aging vessels.
* 📊 Research indicates that the dark fleet has expanded, with ship-to-ship transfers increasing from **5% in 2020 to 10.3% by late 2024**, translating to **over $20 billion in oil transactions**.
* 🌍 The majority of oil in this cluster is Iranian, with Iran selling **over 90% of its oil to China**, as sanctions have created a **lucrative market for cheaper crude**.
* ⚓ Despite the known risks, enforcement of sanctions remains weak, as countries like Malaysia struggle with **limited resources and multiple maritime security challenges**.
* 💰 The effectiveness of U.S. sanctions is debated, as they inadvertently **foster a new market for illicit oil trade**, making it difficult to **fully cut off supplies from major producers**.
* 🚨 Ultimately, the dark fleet's operations continue to thrive, illustrating the **complexities of maritime law enforcement** and the **ongoing challenges posed by global sanctions**.

Someone is looking out, watching us. Yeah. On the edge of one of the world's busiest shipping corridors sits an armada of tankers trading in billions of dollars worth of sanctioned oil. We have found what we believe to be the largest cluster of dark fleet vessels

anywhere in the world. We've just come into the beginning of the cluster. All around you can see oil tankers out of range of law enforcement. Many of these ships gathered here in the South China Sea, east of the Malaysian Peninsula, a part of what's

known as the dark fleet: a network of aging vessels that often operate without insurance and hide their location to move sanctioned oil. Extensive research, data analysis, and eyewitness accounts lay bare the workings of an Asian maritime hub that helps hundreds of millions of barrels of

illicit oil move east, despite the risks. It was about trying to establish how big this phenomenon is, how big this problem is, and therefore how big the risks are. [Music] In 2023, a major accident occurred involving a dark fleet tanker. The Pablo

was the tanker that was coming back from China. When we later looked at the satellite images of the Pablo, we could see that the deck was basically burned through. Three of the crew were lost, so it's a reminder that there is a very real human cost.

Here, the Pablo had been operating for 25 years, far longer than the average life of a legitimate tanker. It had no known insurer, meaning it lay stranded in the ocean for many months until Malaysia ultimately bore much of the recovery costs. Old ships are no longer scrapped

at the rates they used to be, and they're in fact now used in the dark fleet by companies and organizations willing to break the rules. In the past, the international group was ensuring almost 95% of all ships worldwide. Now they're

ensuring about 80-85%, and that's dangerous. The shadow fleet consists of very old ships; there are plenty of accidents. Shipping is a business full of risk; that's why you have insurance. The Pablo was just one of many dark fleet vessels that transited through

the waters east of Malaysia, some of the busiest on Earth. What we see here in Singapore is highly regulated; hundreds of ships pass here daily, up to 70,000 per year. But just nearby, there are other places

that ships go where it's less well-regulated. We became aware of this flotilla at the end of 2023. It was the size and scale of the flotilla that caught our attention. Importantly, it's outside territorial waters and in an area

where countries have much more limited enforcement rights. Positioned midway between the oil exporters in the Persian Gulf and oil consumers like China, it's an ideal spot for ships from east and west to converge. Typically calm waters make transfers easier. We've been following sanctioned

oil for quite a long time and tracking that. We found that not only had that cluster grown, but also the number of ship-to-ship transfers—these are transfers of oil done at sea—that number had increased steadily. The trade in oil subject to U.S. sanctions has surged.

Since 2022, fueled by curbs on Russian exports as well as restrictions reimposed on Iranian crude in 2018, a day before I got to office, everybody was saying Iran would be taking over the Middle East; it was just a question of

when. Now they're just looking to survive. Not all the oil in this cluster and moving around this area is Iranian, but the vast majority is. Because of U.S. sanctions on Iran, Iran really needs to sell its oil and really needs the revenue that comes from these sales. Iran

sells 90%+ of its oil to China, and in particular to private refiners in China. This is a multi-billion dollar trade. In order to stay competitive, the Chinese refiners, of course, would like to procure the cheapest crude they can find, and often times the cheapest crude will be

the ones that are [Music] restricted. It is a known truth in maritime circles, in shipping circles, that this cluster exists, but I think what we were trying to do was really to put some scale around it: how big is it? How big are these risks? How much oil is

We've made our way out here today to try and take a closer look at just exactly how big this group of tankers is. We're just going past Malaysia now, and then it's going to take us quite a few more hours to reach the point that we're after, which is where we saw a ship-to-ship transfer taking place yesterday, um, on the satellite, just to be

A ship-to-ship transfer is not necessarily illegal; however, if done as it is here, in international waters, it looks slightly suspicious. There are certainly some questions we'd really like to answer. We'd like to find a couple of vessels that are, I would say, emblematic of the dark fleet.

We should have maybe three or four vessels of interest here in this area. This is the start of the cluster, so this will be the busiest part. The Iranians are somewhere here, but we have to basically be lucky enough to find them. When we started this project, we

were looking at AIS data mainly, and then we realized that AIS is kind of not good enough because a lot of these tankers don't want to be scrutinized; they don't want to be seen. They switch off their AIS for weeks on end. So, over time,

we started to overlay satellite data. What the satellite has enabled us to do is really examine the cluster, and we're able to, within that, count the number of ship-to-ship transfers that are happening. These are very distinctive shapes, extremely visible against the water. Using almost 5 years of satellite

imagery, Bloomberg News built an algorithm to detect all the instances where vessels adopted the distinctive ship-to-ship position. We've been able to show that that trade has been consistently increasing, which is something that I think the industry intuitively knew, but couldn't really

prove. Of all the ships passing through the area in 2020, 5% were involved in ship-to-ship transfers. Between January and October 2024, this has risen to 10.3%. The data suggests some 350 million barrels of oil changed hands here in the

The first 9 months of 2024, that adds up to more than $20 billion. Okay, so if you were coming up... are they tankers? Of the three, the one on the left is a tanker. Yeah, there's just so much traffic, you...

forget how much actually goes through these waters. This one... this one... Oh, which one? Oh, there is... there is... Wow! Found one! Yeah, yeah. We found two dark fleet vessels doing a ship-to-ship transfer; two supertankers: the Winwin and the Titan.

So, two vessels that are known to us and on our list. When we looked at the map earlier this morning, these vessels were not here. So it's likely that they have their AIS transponders off, which again is fairly typical for dark fleet

vessels. The Titan and the Winwin display every characteristic of the dark fleet. The Titan is known to have transported Iranian oil, while the Winwin's sporadic signaling draws an impossibly linear journey from China to the South China Sea. It's really interesting, as we come

around the side, you can actually see the cables connecting them both and the pipe that will transfer the crude over. And you can see that right through the middle of the vessels. See, there's some protection... mhm... to prevent them from crashing. In a ship-to-ship transfer,

a number of safety precautions are in place to guard against accidents. You're supposed to have somebody on the vessel who is in charge of safety and of overseeing the ship-to-ship transfer. We don't know, of course, whether these were in place, but we certainly have some questions.

You can see clearly Titan is a very, very old boat; it's 20-plus years old. Look at it—a rusty vessel, poorly maintained. They carry about 2 million barrels of oil each. I also see that someone is looking out and, uh, watching us, yeah, from that deck up there. Might be time to move along. Let's go.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Good to go. Full speed ahead. We know that if there is a leak from a vessel like this—2 million barrels of oil—that's just a huge amount.

And if you compare that to the very small spill that happened in Singapore earlier this year, that was 400 tons. I mean, that's just an absolute tiny fraction of what these vessels [Music] carry. As far as we know, almost nothing is being done to shut the FL down.

There's only so much that the Malaysian authorities, in particular the Coast Guard, can do with the resources they have. They have many other maritime security challenges: illicit smuggling, people smuggling, illegal fishing. This seemingly doesn't rank at the top of the list. There is a big debate about how

effective sanctions are and what sanctions effectiveness looks like. In an ideal world, if sanctions were to be fully enforced, it would be very difficult for Iran to bring its oil to the market. But in reality, it is quite difficult to—but there are incentives not to

entirely cut off Iran's oil supply. It is in nobody's interest to completely stop or curb the flow of Iranian, Venezuelan, or also Russian crude to the market because these are very, very big and important producers of oil. So it is in nobody's interest to actually completely

Cut off this flow and send prices skyrocketing. There are very few incentives for China to actively enforce U.S. sanctions. China's economy is still struggling; the refiners' margins are poor. They have every incentive to keep buying cheaper Iranian crude. It's arguable that the increased

use of sanctions by the United States has actually created a new market that those companies and organizations are willing to break and avoid.  The sanctions are able to be exploited in the waters of this region to conduct their business. I don't think that sanctions are ineffective; I do think that they take a very long time

to be effective, and they take a lot of work. Enforcement depends on cooperation with countries, sharing of information, working together to ensure the overall safety of global trade and the shipping lanes, and especially the environment and the seafarers themselves. If there is an oil spill, then

fully insured ships are also effectively uninsured, and that is a big risk that makes the non-shadow fleet very scared and skeptical, and rightly so. My fellow Americans, we will be instituting the highest level of economic sanctions. The United States no longer makes empty threats.

Donald Trump, having reimposed sanctions on Iran during his first term, has said he will renew his 'maximum pressure' campaign to starve the country of the oil revenue it depends on. This flotilla of aging tankers shows that's easier said than done when you have too many sanctions

but not enough enforcement. The illicit actors will exploit that; they know that, and they will carry on with activities, and the illicit activities will grow, and therefore the risks will grow. [Music]

The Illicit Shipping Trade Hiding in Plain Sight

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Bloomberg Originals

Discovery of a large cluster of dark fleet vessels in the South China Sea

Discovery of a large cluster of dark fleet tankers trading in billions of dollars worth of sanctioned oil.

Location of the cluster: South China Sea, east of the Malaysian Peninsula.

The dark fleet's operations: aging vessels, often without insurance, hiding their location to move sanctioned oil.

Accident involving the Pablo tanker, highlighting the human cost of dark fleet operations.

Increased use of old ships in the dark fleet due to decreased scrapping rates.

Analysis of the dark fleet's operations and the challenges of enforcement

Contrast between highly regulated shipping areas (Singapore) and less regulated areas nearby.

The cluster's location outside territorial waters limits enforcement capabilities.

Ideal location for ship-to-ship transfers due to calm waters and proximity to oil exporters and consumers.

Increase in ship-to-ship transfers and trade in sanctioned oil since 2022.

The role of sanctions and the impact on the oil market

Impact of sanctions on Iranian oil exports and the need for revenue.

Chinese refiners' incentive to procure cheap crude oil, including sanctioned oil.

The scale of the problem: the size of the cluster, the risks involved, and the amount of oil being transferred.

Investigation and observation of ship-to-ship transfers

The process of investigating the cluster and searching for ship-to-ship transfers.

Ambiguity of ship-to-ship transfers: not necessarily illegal but suspicious in international waters.

Challenges in tracking dark fleet vessels due to AIS transponder switching.

Use of satellite data to detect ship-to-ship transfers and analyze their increase.

Increase in ship-to-ship transfers from 5% in 2020 to 10.3% between January and October 2024.

Observation of a ship-to-ship transfer between two dark fleet vessels

Observation of the Winwin and Titan tankers conducting a ship-to-ship transfer.

The vessels' AIS transponders were likely off, a typical characteristic of dark fleet vessels.

Characteristics of the Titan and Winwin tankers aligning with dark fleet operations.

Observation of the connection between the vessels and safety precautions.

Age and condition of the Titan tanker, carrying approximately 2 million barrels of oil each.

Challenges in enforcing sanctions and the consequences of inaction

Limited resources and competing priorities for Malaysian authorities.

Debate on the effectiveness of sanctions and the challenges of full enforcement.

Incentives to avoid completely cutting off the flow of crude oil from major producers.

Chinese refiners' incentives to buy cheaper Iranian crude.

Argument that sanctions have created a new market for those willing to break the rules.

Importance of cooperation and information sharing for effective enforcement and safety.