Even as the United States tightens its naval blockade around Iran, satellite images show Tehran is still filling up supertankers with oil at its main export terminal, buying itself time before the squeeze really starts to bite.
According to a report from Bloomberg, images captured Monday by the European Union's Sentinel 1 satellite show a very large crude carrier, capable of hauling around 2 million barrels of oil, moored at the jetty on Kharg Island, Iran's main oil export hub. An image from Saturday last week showed no ships docked there at all.
Iran’s Kharg Island. (Image: Copernicus)
Monday's picture also shows 13 vessels, most of them very large crude carriers, anchored to the east of the island. A comparable image taken the day before the blockade began on April 13 showed roughly half that number. The buildup suggests Iran has been accelerating its loading operations since theblockadetook effect.
Vessels near Kharg Island on 20th April. (Image: Copernicus)
With no evidence yet of large volumes of oil successfully getting around the US blockade, analysts believe the crude being loaded is simply filling up whatever tankers Iran has available nearby.
But the blockade is not just confined to the Gulf of Oman. This week, US forces boarded a tanker called Majestic X carrying Iranian oil in the Indian Ocean, days after intercepting another vessel called Tifani when it was roughly halfway between Sri Lanka and the Strait of Malacca. Both ships are under US sanctions. The seizures signal that Washington is prepared to enforce its blockade well beyond the waters immediately surrounding Iran.
The tankers being loaded right now are adding to that runway. "They're getting tankers filled up, that does give them additional time," said Miad Maleki, a former US Treasury official who worked on sanctions policy during Trump's first term and is now a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. "So that kind of gives them a relief from running out of storage."
JPMorgan analysts including Natasha Kaneva, who was cited in the report, wrote in a note dated April 21 that if the blockade holds, it would "constrain volumes mechanically, not just financially, leaving far less room for workaround trade, and, over time, forcing Iran to curtail production."
Any tanker attempting to slip past the US Navy would likely use the same tactic, meaning a ship that successfully broke through might not show up on tracking screens for another week or more.
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