China’s Dongying port acts as sanctions bypass valve following vessel calls
- US-sanctioned tanker tracked discharging Iranian cargo at China’s Dongying port
- Move follows sanctioned Russian tanker also calling there, suggesting an emerging sanctions bypass point
- Barrels from Iran and Russia are still flowing into China, despite tightened US restrictions
The recent tracking of port calls highlights emerging entry points forming in China for sanctioned oil
A TANKER sanctioned by the US for carrying Iranian oil has been found to have called at Shandong’s Dongying port, where terminals seem to have joined other locations in becoming a new window for China to import sanctioned oil.
Lloyd’s List Intelligence vessel-tracking data shows the 47,999 dwt product tanker Amil (IMO: 9308778) discharged cargo at Wantong Liquid Chemical Terminal in the port between February 11-14.
A satellite image taken on February 13 aligns with the Automatic Identification System position, and shows a tanker matching the dimensions of Amil docked at the berth.
The terminal is controlled by privately owned Shandong Wantong Petrochemical Group. However, the facility’s ownership appears to have been isolated from the controller through a series of renaming and shareholding restructurings of subsidiaries over the past few years.
The Wantong group has been approached for comments.
Amil, which was sanctioned by the US Office of Foreign Asset Control in October 2024, had a protracted period of spoofing its location and not transmitting its AIS signals throughout December and January. At one point it purported to be at the Mediterranean port of Barcelona for several days around December 31.
Vortexa data shows the tanker picked up around 252,300 barrels of Iranian heavy crude via a ship-to-ship transfer offshore Singapore on December 24.
The AIS was only switched on when the tanker sailed through the Singapore Strait on January 28.
The vessel went dark again south of the Riau Archipelago on February 2 once reaching international waters, reappearing six days later as it sailed north past Shanghai, before reaching Dongying.
Amil is currently on its return voyage with its AIS destination shown as Zhoushan, China.
This is the second recent instance of sanctioned vessels outside waiver periods being tracked unloading cargo at Dongying. Previously, the Panama-flagged, 99,997 dwt SI He (IMO: 9378618) was found to have berthed at privately run Dongying’s Baogang Crude Oil Terminal last week, discharging 702,200 barrels of Russian crude loaded in Kozmino in late January.
SI He is one of nearly 160 tankers sanctioned by Ofac on January 10 for transporting Russian oil and the first detected calling at Shandong since then, despite Washington’s latest sanctions and Shandong Port Group’s ban on serving such ships.
An official from the state-owned port group, which oversees most of the port operations in the Chinese province known for being a refinery hub, told Lloyd’s List that SI He did not berth at any of the terminals under the company.
There is no evidence showing Baogang Crude Oil Terminal or Wantong Liquid Chemical Terminal is owned or operated by units of Shandong Port Group.
However, the recent calls at these facilities still signal that additional US sanctions have disrupted but not stopped oil continuing to flow from sanctioned vessels and nations to major buyers such as China.
Elsewhere, the US-sanctioned Nikolay Zadornov (IMO: 9901037), a 2022-built aframax tanker owned by Russia’s Sovcomflot, discharged 700,000 barrels of Sokol crude at Yangshan port near Shanghai on February 16, according to vessel-tracking data.
The tanker was sanctioned alongside SI He by Ofac on January 10. The cargo was loaded at Russia’s Di-Kastri terminal, a Pacific port, on February 4, which meant it did not qualify for any exemptions or waivers.
The receiving terminal was privately owned Yangshan Shengang International Petroleum Terminal, which also took a Sokol cargo from another US-sanctioned tanker Yuri Senkevich (IMO: 9301419) last week.
