LONDON / MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Tankers carrying Iranian fuel cargo, covered by a U.S. seizure warning, are sailing to the United States after talks between U.S. authorities and shipowners, a U.S. government source and a shipping source said on Thursday.
Iran had planned to transport gasoline to Venezuela, a supply line that Tehran and Caracas have fluttered in violation of U.S. sanctions. Washington has imposed sanctions on both countries to choke oil exports and dissuade their governments from their main source of revenue.
Iranian action against another ship on Wednesday in the Gulf was in retaliation against the Greek owner of some of the ships carrying the fuel gases, the government source and two shipping sources said.
U.S. prosecutors filed a lawsuit in July to seize the gasoline on board the four tankers, and a judge later issued an arrest warrant. The fuel cannot be fixed until the tankers carrying it enter U.S. territorial waters.
The owners of the four ships have agreed to transfer the fuel to other ships so it could be shipped to the United States, a U.S. government source said Thursday. The warning only deals with the cargoes, not the ships.
The U.S. Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security and State Department declined to comment Thursday on the record. Neither the Venezuelan oil company PDVSA nor the oil as Venezuela’s information ministers responded to requests for comment.
The United States has previously threatened to impose sanctions on all shipowners and ships involved in oil trade with Venezuela and Iran.
The four tankers that first carried the cargo were the Liberian flag Bella, Bering, Pandi and Luna. They are owned and managed by companies controlled by Greece-based companies Wien LTD and Palermo SA. The fifth ship, the Wila, which boarded Iranian troops off the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday, is owned by Bandit Shipping and controlled by Greece-based IMS SA.
Vienna, Palermo and IMS did not immediately respond to requests for comment sent outside normal office hours.
News that the Iranian trucks were on their way to the United States was reported for the first time by the Wall Street Journal on Thursday.
Tensions between Iran and the United States escalated last year following a series of incidents involving shipping in and around the Gulf of the Middle East.
In July 2019, Iran briefly occupied a British-flagged oil tanker in the Gulf, after Britain seized the Iranian tanker Grace 1, accused of violating sanctions against Syria.
The United States had issued a warrant for the ship and Brian Hook, then the State Department official, sent emails to its captain saying the Trump administration offered him several million dollars to send the tanker to a country that it would shake Washington out of name. The attempt failed, and the oil was eventually sold to the Assad government in Syria.
Additional reporting by David Brunnstrom, Tim Gardner and Phillip Stewart in Washington, Luc Cohen in New York and Humeyra Pamuk in Turkey; Written by Simon Webb; Edited by Daniel Wallis
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