A Vietnam-bound supertanker carrying 2 million barrels of Iraqi oil, which lay in the Gulf of Oman for several days after being stopped by US forces, has returned to its journey.
The Agios Fanourios I departed the waters off Oman’s capital Muscat late on Saturday, after five days of waiting in the area, ship tracking data showed. Early Sunday, a fully loaded very large oil tanker sailed past the border line where the US enforces a naval blockade of Iranian shipping.
The VLCC sailed from the Persian Gulf a week ago, passed the Strait of Hormuz, which is blocked by Iran, and tried to reach the Arabian Sea. As the tanker approached the US maritime blockade line, it turned back into the Gulf of Oman, ship tracking data show. US Central Command said at the time the vessel was rejected to enforce the blockade against Iran.
The buyer of the cargo, PetroVietnam Oil Corp., the trading arm of the Southeast Asian country’s national energy company, sent a request to the U.S. last week to release the tanker.
“This cargo is of extraordinary importance to the Nghi Son refinery, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and the Vietnamese people,” the letter, seen by Bloomberg News, said. “Any further delay risks halting refinery throughput with cascading consequences for millions of Vietnamese consumers, businesses, utilities and industry.”
The vessel’s transit comes after a two-day summit between US President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, where both agreed the strait should be opened, but there was no apparent progress towards the goal. Traffic on the waterway remains well below pre-war levels despite a slight increase in recent days as several crude tankers leave the Gulf.
This article was generated from an automated news agency source without text modification.
