For more than two weeks, Sky News’ Data and Forensics team has plotted the movements of the US-sanctioned oil tanker Marinera.
The ship undertook multiple efforts to hide its identity before its seizure on 7 January off the coast of Iceland.
On Wednesday, 7 January, the US military said it captured the vessel, previously named Bella 1, following a weeks-long pursuit across the Atlantic.
The Royal Air Force and Royal Navy provided support for the Marinera’s seizure, according to the Ministry of Defence, including the provision of state-of-the-art refuelling ship RFA Tideforce.
Flight tracking data showed several US aircraft, including US Air Force special operations, arriving and leaving RAF bases and UK airports in the hours prior to the seizure.
Sky News analysis shows the tanker’s journey from Iran over nearly two months and its apparent attempts to evade detection.
How the Marinera’s voyage unfolded
Ship-tracking AIS location data from 3 September placed the tanker approximately 9km from the Strait of Hormuz, according to Global Fishing Watch.
However, the satellite image below, also taken on 3 September, shows Bella 1 more than 700km away.
It was stationed at Kharg Island, Iran’s primary oil export facility, where analytics company Kpler says it loaded crude oil.
The discrepancy between the AIS data and the satellite imagery suggests the tanker was providing a fake signal to hide its location, a practice known as “spoofing”.
The ship’s signal was restored once it had left Iranian waters, and on 13 November it began its journey.
The AIS data later shows the tanker at Egypt’s Suez South anchorage, where it remained between 23 and 26 November.
The Suez region is a major transport route for oil and gas. Oil can be offloaded at the Suez South anchorage, primarily through ship-to-ship transfers or pipeline systems.
Sky News cannot confirm whether the Bella 1 offloaded oil here.
We can be confident that the tanker was here on these dates because vessels in the area are required to transmit accurate locations.
On 3 December, the ship passed through another area with mandatory location reporting, the Strait of Gibraltar, before continuing its journey across the Atlantic.
It was last spotted by AIS systems on 17 December in the Caribbean, near Antigua and Barbuda.
Reports suggest that the US Coast Guard attempted to board the tanker on the 20 December, stating that the United States had a seizure warrant and that the vessel was not flying a valid national flag.
Under international law, vessels are required to be registered under a particular country, and this country is relied upon for protection.
The Bella 1 was flying the flag of Guyana, but the US said it had not actually registered with the country.
Sky News analysis has found that 40 sanctioned tankers are currently flying the Guyanese flag, despite not one of them being actually registered in Guyana.
One day after the US Coast Guard reportedly attempted to board the Bella 1, it was recorded making 39 distress calls between 12.26pm and 17.13pm.
These distress calls helped us locate the primary position of the tanker that day, which was just over 500km from the coast of Antigua and Barbuda, shown on the map below.
When the ship next appeared, on 1 January, it had travelled more than 3,000 km to the North Atlantic, changed its name to “Marinera” and adopted a Russian flag.
Sky News analysis found that at least 21 other sanctioned oil tankers have also changed their flags to Russia in the past month.
That’s more than changed flags during the whole of 2024.
Five ships changed to Russian flags in just two days following the first seizure of a Venezuela-linked tanker by the US on 10 December.
Of the 22 tankers that have adopted Russian flags in the past month, at least 11 have previously visited both Venezuelan and Russian ports.
The seizure of the Marinera
By 7 January, the Marinera was passing between Iceland and Scotland, escorted by a Russian submarine according to reports in the Wall Street Journal.
Shipping analytics company Windward said the ship was likely heading for the Russian arctic port of Murmansk.
At around 11.26am, the Marinera made a sudden southbound turn. It was later seen at 1.18pm, heading east towards Scotland, according to data shared by TankerTrackers.
At 1.43pm, the US European Command announced it had seized the vessel for violations of US sanctions.
Speaking to Sky News, Mark Cancian, a senior advisor on defence and security at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), said that the helicopters used to board the Marinera were short-ranged.
“Either they came from the US air base on Keflavik, in which case the Icelandic government had to agree, or from a sea platform like the Special Ops mothership,” he said.
Following the seizure, Russia’s transport ministry issued a statement saying that the act had violated maritime law.
“In accordance with the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, freedom of navigation applies in waters on the high seas, and no state has the right to use force against vessels duly registered in the jurisdictions of other states,” the statement read.
The transport ministry also confirmed that Russia had granted the tanker a temporary permit to fly its flag.
The US also announced that it had seized another tanker, M/T Sophia, shortly after announcing the capture of Marinera. US Southern Command stated that the vessel had been “conducting illicit activities” in the Caribbean Sea.
The United States has now seized at least four sanctioned tankers linked to Venezuela, following the capture of vessels Skipper and Centuries in December last year.
The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.
