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Malaysian waters see return of oil transfer by ‘dark fleet’ of tankers
A crackdown against two vessels off Penang was the first disruption of such a ship-to-ship oil transfer in the state for over 10 years
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In the dead of night, officers from Malaysia’s maritime agency boarded two tankers that were transferring millions of barrels of oil in the waters off Penang, as the re-emergence of ageing vessels from a shadow fleet in the country’s waters has put the spotlight on the illegal trade in Asia.
The January 29 bust was a rare disruption to a trade worth billions of dollars each year – much of it from sanctioned oil-producing nations Russia and Iran, and involving ships plying the waters in the Malacca Strait and the South China Sea.
The vessels, the MT Nora and Rcelebra, with a crew of over 50 people from China, Myanmar, Iran, Pakistan and India, were boarded by officers from the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency (MMEA).
By the time the officers arrived, around 2 million barrels had already been piped into the Rcelebra, a supertanker on a European sanctions list for smuggling Russian oil, from MT Nora, the MMEA said.
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