Tehran demands explanation after Indonesia seizes Iranian tanker over ‘illegal oil transfer’
Iran has asked Indonesia to provide details about the seizure of an Iranianflagged vessel, Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said on Monday, a day after Jakarta said it had seized Iran and Panama-flagged tankers in its waters.
Indonesia said on Sunday its coast guard had seized the Iranian-flagged MT Horse and the Panamanian-flagged MT Freya vessels over suspected illegal oil transfer in the country’s waters.
Khatibzadeh said that the seizure
was over a “a technical issue and it happens in shipping field”.
“Our Ports Organisation and the ship owner company are looking to find the cause of the issue and resolve it,” Khatibzadeh told a televised weekly news conference.
Coast guard spokesman Wisnu Pramandita said the tankers, seized in waters off Kalimantan province, will be escorted to Batam island in Riau Island Province for further investigation.
Wisnu told Reuters on Monday that the ships were “caught red-handed” transferring oil from MT Horse to MT Freya and that there was an oil spill around the receiving tanker.
He added that 61 crew members on-board the vessels were
Iranian and Chinese nationals and had been detained. Indonesia’s foreign and energy ministries did not immediately comment on the matter.
Both the supertankers, each capable of carrying 2 million barrels of oil, were last spotted earlier this month off Singapore, shipping data on Refinitiv Eikon showed. Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC) MT Horse, owned by the National Iranian Tanker Company (NITC), was almost fully loaded with oil while VLCC MT Freya, managed by Shanghai Future Ship Management Co, was empty, the data showed.