Oil tanker known to deliver oil to Israel set to leave Turkey

An oil tanker that is known to frequently deliver crude oil to Israel is set to leave the Turkish port of Ceyhan for an "unknown destination", Middle East Eye can reveal.

Researchers from the Palestinian Youth Movement and No Harbour for Genocide, using commercial trading and tracking data, said the Nissos Tinos docked in Ceyhan on 4 October to load 33,830 tonnes of crude oil and is scheduled to depart on 6 October at 6:38am local time.

While the vessel’s final destination is currently unknown, satellite imagery and automatic identification system data (AIS) - a tracking system that uses transceivers on ships - revealed that its last two journeys were crude oil deliveries to Israel.

The tanker previously left Ceyhan on 23 September, arriving in the Israeli port of Ashkelon on 25 September, the data showed. On 10 September, it left Russia’s Novorossiysk and arrived in Israel on 20 September.

Ceyhan is the last stop on the BP-owned Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, which transports crude oil from Azerbaijan. The oil is then shipped from the Heydar Aliyev Terminal at Ceyhan to Israel, accounting for almost 30 percent of its crude oil imports.

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