In waters off Singapore, shadow-fleet tanker carrying 1 million barrels of oil runs aground
- The grounding of the Cameroon-flagged Liberty is another incident near Singapore involving a tanker from a so-called dark or ‘shadow’ fleet
- Sanctions on Venezuela, Iran and Russia have led to the emergence of the fleet of vessels that sail without insurance or safety certification
Oil-spill booms have been deployed around the Liberty, a 23-year old vessel, as a precaution but there has been no actual spill, a spokesman for the Indonesian navy said. The ship remains stuck.
The Liberty falsified its location back in October, telling digital tracking systems that it was off the coast of West Africa when in reality it was collecting Venezuelan oil, according to marine intelligence firms TankerTrackers.com Inc. and Kpler. The ship sails under the flag of Cameroon, a nation deemed “very high risk” by authorities.
The grounding is another incident near Singapore involving a tanker from a so-called dark fleet of vessels that this week was branded as a “grave concern” to global shipping by the International Maritime Organization, or IMO.
The Liberty flies under the flag of Cameroon, the only one designated as very high risk. Industry databases do not provide a beneficial owner for the ship, but a firm called Skyward Management Corp, with an address in Kazakhstan, is listed as its technical manager. A call to a phone number for Skyward said the number was locked. An email to the firm was not immediately returned.