It was a quiet day in January, and many oil traders were still on holiday, when two sources in the industry called to alert me to something unusual – a supertanker that had gone off radar for two weeks appeared off the coast of the United Arab Emirates and was pumping out fuel oil to two smaller vessels. The sources said it appeared that the supertanker was selling Iranian oil in violation of U.S. sanctions. If confirmed, the sale would shine a rare light on how traders and shippers were evading the sanctions. My first task was to identify and monitor the vessels involved. I called up satellite data offered by Refinitiv, a sister […]