The Maduro-Khamenei Oil Alliance: List of Foreign Flagged Vessels Shipping Iranian and Venezuelan Oil

Updated: August 31, 2023

On June 11, 2022, Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi signed a 20-year cooperation agreement to expand ties in the oil and petrochemical industries, the military, and the economy.  Since then, bilateral ties have mushroomed, with Iran supplying over 26 million barrels of crude oil and gas condensate in 2022. In exchange, Venezuela has delivered about the same volume of fuel oil cargo to Iran. Most shipments are carried by National Iranian Tanker Company (NITC) vessels– in both directions: once discharged of Iranian crude and gas in Venezuelan ports, the same NITC tankers load Venezuelan fuel oil on the return leg to Iran.

However, a significant number of non-NITC, foreign-flagged (i.e. not Iranian) vessels are also involved in the trade.  Furthermore, UANI has noted that many tankers involved in transporting Iranian oil to countries like China are now participating in the Venezuelan trade. The below list shows foreign-flagged tankers involved in shipping both Iranian oil and Venezuelan oil since 2019. As of August 28, 2023, UANI has documented 81 vessels that have transported both Iranian and Venezuelan oil and oil products through direct loadings or via ship-to-ship transfers.  That represents one-fifth of the vessels on UANI’s ‘Ghost Armada.’