Iran oil tankers go dark to sail past US blockade

At least two fully laden Iranian tankers have sailed out of the Persian Gulf and past a US blockade this week, part of a flotilla that has made its way around the warships and ferried roughly 9 million barrels of oil to the market. The Hero II and Hedy, two Iran-flagged, very-large crude carriers, are the latest to be captured in satellite imagery, moving past the line identified by the US and into the Arabian Sea on April 20, according to data intelligence firm Vortexa. The pair can together carry as much as 4 million barrels of oil.

The exit of laden tankers demonstrates the limits of US efforts to cordon off Tehran’s crude exports — which President Trump has described as a “tremendous success” — and pressure an otherwise resilient Iranian regime into concessions. Since the blockade began last week, the US Navy has seized an Iran-linked cargo vessel and boarded a sanctioned oil tanker in waters east of Sri Lanka, widening its targeted area.




This is a Bloomberg story.