Seized Oil Tanker Skipper Only The Tip Of The Clandestine Iceberg

The six newly sanctioned tankers are the White Crane, Kiara M., H. Constance, Lattafa, Monique and Tamia.

The cargo of the Skipper is valued around $100 million. As for the ship itself, fair market price for a 20 year old VLCC is around $80 to $90 million, although at least one expert says it would only be worth $25 million.

Along with flying a false flag, the Skipper engaged in running oil to Cuba where it was“laundered” by Asian middlemen. The ship and its contents were not insured. Under international law (specifically the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, UNCLOS), a vessel without valid nationality is considered“stateless.”

The Skipper has an Automatic Identification System (AIS) which all ships over 300 tons must use according to international maritime rules. The Skipper displaces over 300,000 tons dead weight.

AIS is essential for maritime safety and maritime tracking. It broadcasts information on a ship's speed and heading, and GPS location, using FM radio, with a range of roughly 45 miles – enough so that other ships in the vicinity know the type of vessel (by name) and its direction, and can avoid collisions. The FM signal also is picked up by low earth satellites equipped with an AIS package.

AIS can be easily spoofed by ship operators, either crudely by manually importing fake data into the ship's transponder, or using deception software that can make the ship appear elsewhere. The Skipper is known to report fake AIS information, sometimes reporting Skipper's location thousands of miles away from its true coordinates. On occasion, the Skipper also shut down its transponder, often to hide the port it was in, or to carry out secret transfers of oil from the Skipper to other ships.

Spoofing can be discovered when commercial and government tracking organizations match satellite data to reports of a ship's location. It is probably how Skipper got itself on the US Treasury sanctions list three years ago.

There are commercial tracking companies, some of which focus on high-value cargoes such as oil. The US government purchases reports from these companies, which use sophisticated algorithms to identify ships at sea that are trying to spoof AIS, or that may have shut down their AIS system to carry out illegal transfers.

The US government has a strong legal case that it will argue in forfeiture court, probably in Texas.

The Skipper is not the first oil tanker seized by the United States. In 2020, the US seized 1.1 million barrels of Iranian fuel from four vessels that were headed to Venezuela. In 2014 the MV Morning Glory was seized. The Morning Glory was not under US sanctions but allegedly stolen.

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KPLER, a leading data intelligence company, reports that from January 2024 to July 2025, it identified 261 vessels that spoofed their AIS before being sanctioned. Calling spoofing a “fast track to sanctions” KPLER pointed out that of those identified, 61 vessels weresanctioned between three to six months after spoofing and 59 vessels within six to nine months. The others, apparently, were not sanctioned.

If we assume that only the worst offenders get on the sanctions list (which also implies they must be linked to terrorism), with only two of the oil tankers ever seized, most of the ghost fleet has been allowed to operate without any concrete threat to their operations.

This is unfortunate since rogue regimes like Venezuela and Iran, and operators such as Cuba, can get away almost scot-free, pouring money into their cartels and terrorist operations and enriching key players like the Maduro family and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard leaders and the terrorist outfit, Hezbollah.

The seizure of the Skipper is only the tip of the iceberg.

Stephen Bryen, a senior Asia Times correspondent, is a former US deputy undersecretary of defense. This article was first published by his newsletter Weapons and Strategy. It is republished with permisson.

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