Iran seizes US Navy's oil tanker in Gulf
The US Navy identified the vessel as the Advantage Sweet which, according to Refinitiv ship tracking data, is a Suezmax crude tanker which had been chartered by oil major Chevron and had last docked in Kuwait.
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Iran seized a Marshall Islands-flagged oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman in international waters on Thursday, the US Navy said, the latest in a series of seizures or attacks on commercial vessels in sensitive Gulf waters since 2019.
Iran's army said it had seized a Marshall Islands-flagged oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman after it collided with an Iranian boat, injuring several crewmen, Iranian state media reported.
"Two members of the boat's crew are missing and several were injured due to the collision of the ship with the boat," an army statement said.
The US Navy identified the vessel as the Advantage Sweet which, according to Refinitiv ship tracking data, is a Suezmax crude tanker which had been chartered by oil major Chevron and had last docked in Kuwait.
The vessel's destination was listed as the US Gulf of Mexico port of Houston, ship tracking data showed.
Its manager is listed as Genel Denizcilik Nakliyati AS, a Turkey-based company which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The US Navy said that after sending a P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft to monitor the situation, "we have since been able to determine the IRIN (Iranian navy) conducted the seizure".
About a fifth of the world's crude oil and oil products passes through the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow choke point between Iran and Oman which the Advantage Sweet had passed through, according to data from analytics firm Vortexa.
Boarded via helicopter
Maritime security company Ambrey said the vessel had been boarded via helicopter. "The vessel did not show any signs of conducting evasive manoeuvres prior to the incident," it said.
Munro Anderson, with maritime security company Dryad, said separately that Iran usually detained vessels for "leverage or signalling".
Since 2019 there have been a series of attacks on shipping in the strategic Gulf waters at times of tension between the United States and Iran.
Iran last November released two Greek-flagged tankers it had seized in the Gulf in May in response to the confiscation of oil by the United States from an Iranian-flagged tanker off the Greek coast.
The US Navy, whose Fifth Fleet is based at the Gulf island state of Bahrain, called on Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Navy (IRGCN) to immediately release the tanker.
The ship issued a distress call during the seizure, the US Navy statement said.
According to the International Maritime Organisation shipping database, the Advantage Sweet is owned by a China-registered company called SPDBFL No One Hundred & Eighty-Seven (Tianjin) Ship Leasing Co Ltd.
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