Ofac said the Houthis have used ballistic missiles, explosives, naval mines, and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles to strike military targets, population centres, infrastructure, and nearby commercial shipping in Saudi Arabia, along key international trade routes

Mysterious Piraeus-based Edge Maritime has four suezmaxes shipping Venezuelan crude

President Biden said that ‘additional steps’ were necessary to address the national emergency declared in his predecessor’s executive order in November 2020, including the threat posed by China’s ‘the military-industrial complex’

US Trade Representative Katherine Tai last week called attention to the issue, saying forced labour ‘harms the lives and wellbeing of fishers and workers around the world and it must be eliminated’

Lloyd’s List’s analysis of shipping’s sustainability and ESG reports shows decarbonisation but an alarming lack of clarity from owners on meeting future emission targets; how the lifting of Iranian sanctions will do little to lift the burden of compliance risk; uncertainty surrounding a potential recovery in product tanker rates

The Trump era of ‘maximum pressure’ campaigns may be recast under the Biden administration, but the requirement to monitor maritime risk is now embedded within financial, insurance and political processes. All signs point to an increasingly complex global regime well beyond the current focus on US compliance

Three of the vessels were formerly owned by Greece’s Gotsis family before their sale to anonymous Emerati business, which used them to ship Venezuelan crude for several voyages before scrapping

Legal tactic has also been used to seize crude and refined products cargo on foreign-flagged vessels accused of breaking US sanctions on Venezuela and Iran over the past two years

Removal of the sanctions, fully reimposed in early 2019, would allow Iranian crude exports to officially resume and remains one of the largest wildcards facing tanker owners

Ships are not part of Iran’s state-owned fleet but performing the same role, says non-government organisation, noting vessel numbers rose from 70 at end of last year

China projected to import more than 1m barrels per day of Iranian crude in April, the highest monthly volume since sanctions were fully re-imposed in mid-2019

There are 75 tankers now registered with 17 flags of African countries, or Pacific or Caribbean islands with little technical expertise or large vessels in their fleets, Lloyd’s List Intelligence data shows