The phantom fleet fueling Israel’s wars

On March 1 the Kimolos, an oil tanker flying the Marshall Islands flag and operated by a Greek shipping company, disappeared from radars while sailing south-southwest about 60 nautical miles off the Lebanese coast. Two days earlier, it had docked at the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, Turkey. There, it had loaded approximately one million barrels of Azerbaijani crude oil at the BTC pipeline terminal, which transports oil from the Caspian Sea. For nearly four days, the tanker — which had declared that it was heading to Port Said, Egypt — stopped transmitting its position to the Automatic Identification System (AIS), as it is required to do by maritime safety regulations. After those four days, according to the Global Fishing Watch tracking platform, it reappeared about 40 miles south of the spot where it had disappeared, only this time it was sailing north, back towards the port of Ceyhan. What happened during those days it had become a phantom ship?

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