Bluebell

The US-sanctioned 'Bluebell' was now spoofing its position in Indonesia’s territorial waters. The tanker sailed into the area on July 16, 2025, indicating the navigational status as “at anchor” and then began location (GNSS) manipulation to obfuscate its true location. It then went dark on July 22, and stopped AIS transmittings in one of the world’s busiest maritime chokepoints, underscoring the escalating safety and maritime security risks to Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia from sanctioned and high-risk tankers loitering in waters near the Riau archipelago. The real location of the tanker was unknown. The 'Bluebell', formerly known as 'Cross Ocean', had spent a month in this area, where about 80 Iran and Russia-trading tankers assemble for floating storage and unregulated STS transfers of Western-sanctioned oil, often under dangerous conditions. The ships form part of an inefficient logistics network of dark fleet tankers that ship crude cargoes from Russia, Iran and Venezuela via multiple STS transfers in international waters to obscure the destination and origin. Dozens are falsely flagged like the 'Bluebell', thus invalidating insurance and certificates of safety and seaworthiness. The 'Bluebell' is one of some 1900 ships identified as part of the dark fleet, and among hundreds of vessels now transmitting a false flag, with 40% of Iran-trading tankers and 30% of Russia trading tankers in the dark fleet now using fraudulent registries, signaling false flags such as Curaçao in this case, or whose flag status is unknown. Fraudulent registries linked to these trades by the IMO include Aruba, Benin, Curaçao, Guinea, Guyana, Eswatini, Malawi, Timor-Leste, and St Maarten. Other ships falsely transmit they are flagged with legitimate registries, posing a significant threat to the regulatory integrity of global seaborne trade and undermines the foundations of the world’s maritime economic system.

Clients of Hellenic Tankers of Greece are reported to have purchased aframax BRITISH LAUREL (106K BLT 2002 TSUNEISHI/JAPAN) for $15 mill