The ship had previously loaded 145,000 metric tonnes of oil in the Iraqi port of Basra and was heading to Aliaga in western Turkey via the Suez Canal, its operator Empire Navigation told Reuters, adding that it had lost contact with the vessel.
The tanker is manned by a crew of 19 including 18 Filipino nationals and one Greek national, the operator said, adding it was chartered by Turkish oil refiner Tupras.
When it was previously seized last year, the US said that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards had been using the tanker to send 980,000 barrels of crude oil to China, in violation of American sanctions. The oil was confiscated but took nearly two and a half months to obtain due to fears of secondary sanctions on vessels used to unload it. The tanker was renamed the St Nikolas after unloading the cargo.