Iranian ‘Ghost Fleet’ Tanker Filmed Slipping US Blockade With 500,000 Barrels Of LPG For China

A sanctioned Iranian tanker carrying about 500,000 barrels of liquefied petroleum gas slipped past the U.S. naval blockade and delivered its cargo to China, according to United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), which says it filmed the ship at a Malaysian anchorage along the way.

Tanker laden with Iranian LPG transiting the Gulf of Oman (Credit: ESA Copernicus & Marine Traffic) (ESA Copernicus & Marine Traffic)

The vessel, the SOGL (IMO 9208227), loaded Iranian LPG at Assaluyeh Port in late August and got past the blockade on Sept. 1, UANI told Fox News. The group says it chartered a supply boat and ran about 100 nautical miles out to the EOPL anchorage off Malaysia on Sept. 16, where it filmed the SOGL taking on fuel and services, before the tanker sailed north into the South China Sea and discharged at Xinzhou Port in China.

On Oct. 8, three weeks after UANI filmed it, the Treasury Department sanctioned it as one of 17 shadow fleet vessels, saying the Comoros-flagged tanker, owned by Marshall Islands-based Gravion Maritime Company, “has transported more than two million barrels of Iranian propane/butane since September 2025.” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the action was “starving the tyrannical regime in Tehran of the money it uses to wage war in the region.”

Since the blockade was reinstated in July, “only around nine small tankers carrying Iranian LPG have successfully passed the blockade line,” UANI wrote in its Oct. 29 shipping update. On crude, the blockade is holding: the group says it hasn’t tracked a single tanker laden with Iranian crude that left the Gulf of Oman and avoided U.S. enforcement since July 12.

The US blockade on Iran has been very effective.

Since 14 JUL, the US maritime blockade on vessels coming and going from Iranian ports has prevented Iran from exporting any of its crude oil. 

During September, UANI satellite monitoring has also observed no crude oil loadings… pic.twitter.com/ti60H8bdf6

— Charlie B (@supbrow) October 8, 2026

UANI senior analyst Jemima Shelley told Fox that the small tankers switch off their AIS transponders, often fly a false flag so they present as stateless, run the Strait of Hormuz, and hand the cargo to another ship in the Gulf of Oman, which then tries the blockade line. Doing that with LPG is risky, she said, which is also why U.S. forces mostly try to turn the small gas tankers around rather than use force.

UANI says the DANDELION (IMO 9379404) “is likely attempting to breach the U.S. maritime blockade, laden with 490,000 barrels of Iranian LPG,” which it took on from the SEA OPERA in a ship-to-ship transfer off Shinas, Oman, on Oct. 26. The SEA OPERA had loaded at Assaluyeh on Aug. 26 and spent two months loitering in the Gulf of Oman.

Shelley called Malaysia’s EOPL anchorage a “key node in Iran’s oil trade to China” and said Malaysian authorities appear to be “looking the other way.” UANI counts about 20 tankers from its “Ghost Armada” list still loitering at the EOPL, and another 22 anchored or loitering just north of it, which it says most likely moved after recent enforcement by Malaysian maritime authorities.

China now takes “almost 100%” of Iran’s oil and LPG exports, Shelley said, up from about 80% of Iran’s liquid cargo exports in earlier years.

UANI counts at least 53 tankers laden with Iranian oil, mostly crude, sitting along Iran’s coast, and only eight of the 52 loadings it has tracked since July 14 came from Kharg Island, Iran’s main crude terminal. As we reported, the logjam has been building for months as the blockade starves Tehran of oil revenue. Empty Iran-flagged tankers that offloaded abroad are stuck too: UANI has 20 of them loitering off Sri Lanka, unable to sail home.

Fox said it had asked U.S. Central Command for comment. Shelley said Iran’s oil in floating storage has fallen to “zero to seven million barrels” since the blockade was enforced.