An oil tanker appeared at a Chinese port carrying crude last week despite the ship having been retired nearly three years ago.
The ship appears to be a “zombie vessel,” taking on the identity of an actual ship that is no longer in service in an attempt to evade economic sanctions, according to a report from Bloomberg.
This vessel, known as the EM Longevity, was built in 2000 and decommissioned in December 2021. At the time, the ship was reportedly sent to a scrapyard.
To the surprise of many, a ship with the same identity number as the EM Longevity appeared at a port in Dalian, China, the southern tip of the Liaoning province, on Sept. 23. There, the ship reportedly partially unloaded its cargo before sailing across the Yellow Sea.
On Sunday, the ship docked at the port city of Yantai, in the Shandong province, tracking data reviewed by Bloomberg showed.
While there is the possibility that EM Longevity was retrieved from the scrapyard where it was left several years ago, experts have thrown cold water on the idea.
“Regardless of whether it’s the same ship or not, why would you want to reactivate a crude oil tanker that’s 24 years old?” said Jan Stockbruegger, a research fellow with the University of Copenhagen’s Ocean Infrastructure Research Group. “This seems like a vessel that’s signaling that it’s legitimate just so that it can sail under the radar.”
There are other concerning signs that indicate the vessel is posing as the retired ship. Specifically, data compiled by VesselTracker found that the ship sails under the flag of the small landlocked African nation of Eswatini, formerly known as Swaziland. During its 20 years of service, the EM Longevity had sailed under the Singaporean flag.
Earlier this year, the kingdom of Eswatini informed the International Maritime Organization that hundreds of ships improperly use its flag.
Additionally, the IMO registration number for EM Longevity reportedly does not list a current manager, owner, or insurer.
These patterns are eerily similar to those used in the “dark fleet,” which refers to oil tankers that are known for using deceptive oil shipping practices and manipulating or disabling the universally used tracking system, the Automatic Identification System.
“In my opinion, ships leaving the Persian Gulf under this flag should raise questions because it’s been known for some time now that the Eswatini flag is being used by ships linked to sanctioned countries/commodities, like oil associated with sanctioned countries have been using different flags to maintain operations,” Noam Raydan, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told the Washington Examiner.
Raydan explained that the Gabonese flag has also been used by oil tankers moving sanctioned Russian crude.
“In the ship industry, ship owners/operators can find several ways to circumvent sanctions either by spoofing their AIS, sailing dark, changing their names and flags several times within a short period, etc., or impersonating other vessels,” Raydan said.
Russia has been accused of using a massive “shadow fleet” filled with these vessels to get around European Union sanctions amid the yearslong war in Ukraine. In April, Swedish military officials accused Russia of deploying an estimated 1,400 in the Baltic Sea to disguise oil exports and engage in espionage.
The Scandinavian country warned that not only do these ships pose a threat to the trade industry, but they could have a catastrophic impact on the environment from collisions or oil leakage.
“The fact that they are transporting oil, which fuels Russian aggression against Ukraine, is bad enough,” Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom said at the time. “But even worse is the fact that Russia doesn’t care one bit, apparently, about the fact that these ships could cause major environmental havoc in seas, which, if you take the Baltic Sea, is sensitive as it is.”
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Meanwhile, reports indicate that China has been importing crude from such dark fleets as the Asian country remains the world’s largest importer of oil. While the United States has issued sanctions on crude exports from nations like Russia and Iran, China has remained a consistent customer, according to the Washington Post.
Identified dark ships have been known to travel to and from Iran in recent months. Similarly, the ship appearing to pose as the EM Longevity also sailed in waters near Iran around Aug. 11 before making its way to China, according to Bloomberg.