A US company has issued a photograph claiming to show the controversial Iranian VLCC Adrian Darya 1 off a Syrian port on Friday.
Maxar Technologies, a US space technology firm, said on Saturday that the 301,000-dwt tanker (built 1997) was close to the port of Tartus.
The ship had turned its AIS off on Monday in the east Mediterranean off Lebanon.
Speculation had been mounting that it would call in Syria or try to offload its crude cargo on to other smaller ships.
The former Grace 1 hit the headlines when it was seized in Gibraltar in July for allegedly attempting to take the Iranian oil to Syria, in breach of European Union sanctions.
But it was released in August after Iran pledged the crude would not go to Syria.
It has since sold its oil and registered destinations in Greece and Turkey before removing them.
Blacklisted
The US has blacklisted the vessel and its Indian master for “providing support to terrorism or acts of terrorism”.
The US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) said it took action against the tanker as it was “ultimately benefiting Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF).”
The US treasury said the vessel was “blocked property” under an anti-terrorist order. Captain Akhilesh Kumar was also blacklisted under the order.
US secretary of state Mike Pompeo had earlier said he had intelligence that the ship would head to Tartus.
