Iran ships cooking gas and jet fuel past US naval blockade

Iran has been shipping cooking gas and jet fuel by sea since July despite the US naval blockade, according to four people in maritime security who track oil movements in the Gulf and spoke to Reuters. The method is to blend Iranian cargoes into the growing volume of ship-to-ship transfers that other Gulf producers conduct off the coast of Oman.

The US advocacy group United Against Nuclear Iran, which follows tanker traffic by ship and satellite, counts at least eight gas tankers carrying Iranian LPG out of the Gulf of Oman since mid-July — an estimated 4.1 million barrels in total, according to the group's analyst Jemima Shelley. Some handed their cargoes over near the Omani coastal towns of Shinas and Sohar; others waited out the cordon before moving past it. Most of the gas continued on to Malaysia's Eastern Outer Port Limits for further transfers, with China the likely final destination. A tanker carrying Iranian jet fuel arrived in Myanmar in September, according to satellite analysis from the maritime intelligence group SynMax.

The volumes are small against Iran's previous export trade, and the blockade — which Central Command says stretches across the Gulf of Oman near the Iran-Pakistan border, and which the command calls "ironclad" — has stopped the country's crude exports completely. The October 13 update counted four commercial vessels disabled and 135 ships turned around over three months. But a Reuters review of Treasury sanctions found that six of the eight gas tankers, along with the jet fuel tanker, were already listed under US sanctions for carrying Iranian petroleum and petrochemicals. A US military official supplied the caveats: a ship getting through does not automatically mean it slipped past the blockade. Each vessel is assessed individually, some are allowed through for humanitarian reasons, and some are watched without being acted against, for operational reasons.

The blockade was first imposed on April 13, lifted in June when Washington and Tehran reached a draft understanding, and reimposed on July 14 when that agreement fell apart. Shelley describes the shipments that get through as "more by opportunism" than a new export push — a handful of tankers out of a fleet the US Navy mostly turns back.

The United States sanctioned Myanmar's jet fuel industry in 2023, citing military airstrikes on civilians that the UN says have killed thousands. In September, Iranian jet fuel arrived in Myanmar all the same.