An independent ship monitoring service said Iran has been utilising a “dark fleet” of oil tankers to deliver nearly 1.8mn barrels of crude oil and oil products per day to its customers.  

The dark fleet or ghost fleet refers to oil tankers that secretly ship oil cargoes to destination markets by switching off their automatic identification systems (AIS), which provide the locational positions on vessels, using various methods, including multiple ship-to-ship transfers of crude loads in the middle of oceans to other tankers, and altering documents and oil brands.

TankerTracker.com, which tracks shipments and oil storage said in an X post on September 3 that Iran sent last year about 1.5mn barrels of oil to China, more than 200,000 barrels of oil to the United Arab Emirates, and 70,000 barrels of crude to Syria daily on average via the ghost fleet.

In total, more than 1.775mn barrels of Iranian crude and oil products were transported to these destinations per day last year, making Iran the top utilizer of the so-called dark fleet followed by Russia and Venezuela.

Iran's main customers for crude oil and gas condensate are China, Afghanistan and Syria, while the UAE purchases Iranian fuel oil (mazut). Iran also exports liquefied gas (propane and butane) to China, according to Radio Farda.

TankerTrackers.com said one-third of the vessels in the ghost fleet were on the blacklist of the US Treasury and one-third of those blacklisted had an Iranian flag.

IntelliNews reached out to the company for further comment, but they were unavailable for comment before this article went to press. 

Several estimates say that that Iran's total oil exports last year hovered around 1.46mn barrels per day (bpd), and it has identified 400 ships from the so-called dark fleet involved in secretly transporting Iranian oil.

More than half of Iran's oil is reportedly sent to Malaysia, where it is labeled as Malaysian oil and sent to small Chinese refineries known as “teapots.” The rest of Iran's oil is rebranded by dealers in Oman, the UAE, Iraq, and other countries and sent to China under the name of those countries.

Chinese customs data shows that in July, China imported 1.53mn bpd from Malaysia. The volume is three times Malaysia's total oil production and twelve times the amount of crude oil Malaysia exported to China before the US imposed sanctions on Iranian oil sales in 2018.

The US is reportedly greenlighting these exports as part of its strategy to keep oil prices steady in the face of Russian aggression in Ukraine, but has not tacitly acknowledged the position, as it goes contrary to its current sanctions policy against the Islamic Republic. 

China's customs office claims to have imported zero oil from Iran, which, if true, suggests that all Iranian oil is making its way into the Asian economic powerhouse disguised as imports from other nations.

Data from Belgian data and analytics group Kpler indicates that some 1.5mn bpd of Iranian oil arrived in China in the first seven months of 2024, Newsbase previously reported.

Kpler’s figures also suggest that China’s imports of Iranian oil last month hit a record high of 1.75mn bpd in 11 years.

The volume in August is over 5% higher than the previous peak of 1.66mn set in October last year and 41% above the daily average of July, which hovered around 1.24mn bpd, according to Kpler data that extends back to January 2013.

“Chinese teapots… now have stronger motivation to ramp up production and therefore need more feedstock,” Muyu Xu said.