Sep 10 2019

An international ship tracking company has cast doubt on claims that the Islamic Republic’s supertanker Adrian Darya -1, detained by Gibraltar in July and released in August, has discharged its cargo in eastern Mediterranean.

A day earlier, the spokesman of the Islamic Republic Foreign Ministry had maintained, “The oil tanker Adrian Darya 1, ex-Grace 1, has docked on the Mediterranean coast and successfully unloaded its cargo, despite attempts against it.”

However, Mousavi stopped short of naming the port of delivery.

Adrian Darya -1 is the same vessel earlier called Grace 1, which was detained for six weeks in Gibraltar on suspicions of carrying oil for Syrian refineries in violation of EU sanctions.

“High-resolution SkySat imagery captured by @planetlabs today shows a shadow angle that allowed us to calculate that the vessel is still fully laden in the water. As opposed to Iran’s FM statements yesterday,” TankerTrackers twitted on late Monday night, September 9.

In its tweet, TankerTrackers has insisted that “The AdrianDarya1 has discharged no oil as of yet.”

Referring to the exact location of Adrian Darya -1 and time the imagery was captured, TankerTrackers has asserted, “We are able to calculate by shadow length if it is fully laden, partially laden or empty,” adding, “Based on shadow depth calculations, the Adrian Darya 1 was still fully laden with 2.1 million barrels of Iranian crude oil in the anchorage Tartous, Syria on 2019-09-09.”

Iran has been delivering cheap or free oil to Syria’s Bashar al-Assad for years because Syria’s own modest oil fields are not in the hands of the Damascus regime.

Source » radiofarda