During the last SAFETY4SEA Athens Forum, Mr. Rod Lingard, the Club Manager of Hellenic Mutual War Risks Association (Bermuda) Limited, looked at key war risks trends, including sanctions and the recent advice from OFAC on sanctions compliance programmes; developments in the Arabian Gulf; the status of piracy in both the Gulf of Guinea and the Western Indian Ocean.
The Iranian news outlet Shana published the first images of the damaged tanker Sabiti, which was hit by missiles in the Red Sea, last week, off Saudi Arabia’s coast and suffered two hull breaches, while Iranian PMO’s Managing Director Mohammad Rastad commented that it was definitely a missile hit.
After the Iranian oil tanker Sabiti was hit by missiles in the Red Sea, last week, off Saudi Arabia’s coast, leakage of cargo has been stopped. The ship is now heading for the Gulf, while the incident has not been independently confirmed yet, and there is no claim of responsibility.
The Iranian tanker Adrian Darya 1, which has been at the center of a diplomatic dispute between Iran and the West over the summer, has offloaded oil in Syria, said US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday, calling on the EU to condemn Iran and hold Tehran accountable.
According to the Iranian Ports and Maritime Organization (PMO), Iran and Italy are under discussions for launching a key shipping route that could help increase trade between the port of Chabahar, in southeastern Iran, and Venice, in northern Italy.
Following OFAC’s decision on issuing sanctions against COSCO companies, many were those affected, as well as the US-listed Teekay Group that has been qualified as a ‘blocked person’.
According to Bloomberg the costs of oil tankers are rapidly increasing, following the US’s sanctions against Chinese companies accusing them of hauling Iranian crude. The rates for vessels hauling 2 million-barrel cargoes of Middle East oil to Asia rose to 19%; Meanwhile, the cost to transmit US crude to Asia on supertankers increased by 6.3% to $8.5 million on Thursday, as Bloomberg reports.
Following over two months of detention in Iranian waters, the British tanker Stena Impero was freed and safely docked in Dubai on Saturday. The ship had been at the Bandar Abbas port since 19 July, when it was detained by Iranian forces amid increasing tensions between Iran and the UK.
As part of its “Learn from the past” series, SAFETY4SEA is focusing today on the Sanchi disaster, which claims the world’s worst oil tanker disaster in decades, less than two years after it collided with ‘CF Crystal’ on East China Sea and took lives of 32 people while causing a vast oil pollution.
The British-flagged Stena Impero vessel departed the Bandar Abbas port, where it has been anchored since July. The vessel was detained by Iran for alleged marine violations, following the increasing tensions between Iran and the UK.
