Chinese Oil Import Port Targets Shadow Fleet Tankers

By Charles Kennedy of OilPrice.com

Several terminal operators in China’s Shandong province plan to ban entry to old vessels and such with fake or suspicious certificates in a move that appeared to be aimed at the shadow fleet, Reuters reported on Friday, quoting a notice from the operators it has reviewed.

The terminal operators Qingdao Haiye Oil Terminal Co, Qingdao Shihua Crude Oil Terminal Co, Qingdao Gangxin Oil Products Co, and Qingdao Lixing Logistics Co, last week issued an official notice for the Huangdao Port.

The communication, seen by Reuters, will ban – effective November 1 – tankers operating for 31 years or more and vessels using fake International Maritime Organization (IMO) identification numbers from docking at the terminals of the Huangdao Port, which is part of the greater Qingdao port area.

Qingdao is the key entry point of Iranian oil into China, which continues to be the main customer of Iran, purchasing more than 90% of its oil exports.

The terminal operators at Huangdao Port will also ban tankers with invalid or expired certificates from international certification and regulatory bodies. Vessels with a record of accidents or pollution for the prior three years will also be denied entry, per the notice reviewed by Reuters.

The notice comes a month after the U.S. sanctioned two Chinese crude oil terminals and storage operators as the Treasury took additional actions to disrupt Iranian oil exports and the shadow fleet enabling them.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated a China-based crude oil terminal and storage operator in the Dongjiakou Port Area in Shandong.

Dongjiakou and Huangdao are both part of the greater Qingdao port area.

But the measures of the Huangdao port operators may not have much effect on flows, as Huangdao has a minor role in handling shadow fleet compared to other ports in the Qingdao area, Emma Li, China analyst at tanker tracker Vortexa Analytics, told Reuters.

“The new tanker risk-rating rules appear to be a precautionary step driven by environmental concerns and rising U.S. sanctions pressure, even though the latter is not explicitly mentioned in the notice,” Li told Reuters.

Iran, meanwhile, appears unfazed by the prospect of UN snapback sanctions coming into effect this weekend, saying that it will continue to sell its oil to its biggest and nearly only buyer, China.