Shipping experts say the Pablo’s seemingly zombie reappearance is due to a practice where transponder signals from scrapped ships are used by dark-fleet tankers seeking to camouflage their identities, locations and routes as they move sanctioned oil around the globe. — Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash
After a dark-fleet ship exploded off the coast of Malaysia in May last year, its scorched wreck was sent to an Indonesian scrapyard. Then, last month, its transponder signal went live once again.
Signals from the supposedly dismantled Pablo were received from the Gulf of Guinea in October, according to S&P Global Commodity Insights, analytics firm Kpler and maritime database Equasis. According to S&P, which first reported the incident last month, the data show that the vessel was conducting a ship-to-ship transfer of cargo with another tanker owned by US-sanctioned oil company Petroleos de Venezuela, or PDVSA.
Uh-oh! Daily quota reached.
