Oil tankers near Iran appear to be in rural Russia as signals jammed

LONDON - The Front Tyne oil tanker was sailing through the Gulf between Iran and the United Arab Emirates on Sunday when just past 9:40 a.m. shiptracking data appeared to show the massive vessel in Russia, in fields better known for barley and sugar beets.

By 4:15 p.m., the ships erratic signals indicated it was in southern Iran near the town of Bidkhun, before later placing it back and forth across the Gulf.

Mass interference since the start of the conflict between Israel and Iran has affected nearly 1,000 ships in the Gulf, according to Windward, a shipping analysis firm.

A collision involving tankers south of the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping lane for the worlds oil, occurred on Tuesday with both vessels catching fire.

One of them, the Front Eagle, a sister ship of the Front Tyne, and like it, more than three football pitches long, appeared to be onshore in Iran on June 15, data from commodity data platform Kpler showed.

There is usually no jamming in the Strait of Hormuz and now there is a lot,” said Ami Daniel, chief executive of Windward.

The culmination of all that is higher risk. Its a hot area... if you dont geolocate, theres a bigger chance youll have an accident.

Ships are required to indicate their location and are fitted with transmitters similar to GPS called an AIS, or Automatic Identification System, that send regular signals on location, speed and other data. Jamming disrupts these signals.

The problem these days is that most ships use digitised systems, so if your GPS is jammed, then you have no real form of navigating other than by the seat of your pants, said Jim Scorer, secretary general of International Federation of Shipmasters’ Associations.

If a ships crew intentionally disrupts its signalling, it