The phantom fleet fueling Israel’s wars

On March 1 the Kimolos, an oil tanker flying the Marshall Islands flag and operated by a Greek shipping company, disappeared from radars while sailing south-southwest about 60 nautical miles off the Lebanese coast. Two days earlier, it had docked at the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, Turkey. There, it had loaded approximately one million barrels of Azerbaijani crude oil at the BTC pipeline terminal, which transports oil from the Caspian Sea. For nearly four days, the tanker — which had declared that it was heading to Port Said, Egypt — stopped transmitting its position to the Automatic Identification System (AIS), as it is required to do by maritime safety regulations. After those four days, according to the Global Fishing Watch tracking platform, it reappeared about 40 miles south of the spot where it had disappeared, only this time it was sailing north, back towards the port of Ceyhan. What happened during those days it had become a phantom ship?

A March 5 satellite image from the company Planet reveals that the Kimolos was located next to the terminal of the Israeli port of Ashkelon, which houses 24 storage tanks of crude oil connected by pipelines to refineries in Ashdod, Eilat and Haifa. But why hide this stopover if, in principle, it doesn’t constitute illegal trafficking?

That March 4, while the Kimolos unloaded its crude oil in Ashkelon, the United States and Israel were bombing Iran, which the Turkish-Islamist publication Sabah, which is closely linked to the government of Turkey, called: “Attack on Iran under Zionist instigation.” “You are the murderers of 165 little girls,” stated the newspaper Hürriyet, among the most important in the country, in a full-page spread alongside photos of the funeral of the Minab school students and photos of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu. The cover of another Turkish newspaper, Milliyet, stated: “The real missile is oil.”

“Israel is dependent on imports of crude oil. The refineries in Haifa and Ashdod convert this crude oil into jet fuel, diesel, and military-grade products supplied directly to the Israeli army and air force,” states a report from the organizations Energy Embargo for Palestine, Palestinian Youth Movement and Progressive International that details how the parent company of the Ashdod refinery, Paz Oil, has contracts with the Israeli Ministry of Defense. “This fuel, delivered primarily on Greek-managed vessels, enables the Israeli Air Force, military vehicles, and tanks to enact a genocide,” states the report.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government has harshly criticized the Israeli bombing of Lebanon, Syria and Iran, and especially, its indiscriminate attacks against Palestinians. Turkey has always been an important economic partner for Israel (in 2023, the countries’ bilateral trade reached $7 billion), but given the gravity of the situation in Gaza and under pressure from its grassroots supporters, the Erdogan administration announced a total embargo on trade with Israel in May 2024. Three months later, it banned all Israeli vessels from docking in its ports, as well as vessels with Turkish flags from docking in Israeli ports.

But the issue of the BTC pipeline is more delicate, as it is governed by an intergovernmental agreement and several international contracts that prevent the Turkish government from blocking the transit of crude oil except on a temporary basis in the event of emergencies related to national security or the environment. Although the pipeline and the terminal at the port of Ceyhan are managed by the Turkish state-owned company BOTAS, they are owned by a consortium dominated by the British multinational BP and the Azerbaijani state-owned company SOCAR.

Azerbaijan maintains an excellent relationship with Turkey through cultural and political ties, but also with Israel, which has sent it surveillance technology and indispensable military supplies for its recent wars against Armenia. In November 2024, the Turkish minister of energy said that “the companies that transport oil to international markets through the BTC pipeline have respected Turkey’s decision to not trade with Israel and have not sent shipments [via boat] with Israel as recipient.”

Suddenly Israel, which until 2024 was one of the primary buyers of Azerbaijani crude oil, ceased to appear in the official numbers of Azerbaijan. Still, data from the Kpler commodities monitoring platform, cited by Reuters, indicate that in 2025, Azerbaijani crude oil exports to Israel rose by 31%, reaching their highest levels since 2022. Black Azerbaijani gold made up 46.4% of all Israeli crude oil imports, far ahead of its second-largest supplier, Russia (28%).

Data provided to EL PAÍS by energy transportation analyst firm Vortexa shows that, while during the first months of the Turkish embargo, oil shipments from Ceyhan fell notably, since the middle of last year, they have once again risen and even surpassed the volume of the months previous to the trade ban.

Data Desk, an organization that investigates the hydrocarbons industry, calculates that since the embargo began and through March 30, 58 million barrels of crude oil (around 8 million tons) have been shipped from the Ceyhan port to Israel.

The role of Greek shipping companies

Although the Kimolos is the vessel that has made the trip the most times (at least 17 during the last two years), it’s not the only one. On October 20, the oil tanker Nissos Ios left Ceyhan headed to Port Said, but turned off its AIS south of the island of Cyprus and did not reappear on the map until three days later, with a draft three meters shallower than what was reported when it left Turkey, suggesting it had unloaded the crude oil it had been carrying. The Energy Embargo for Palestine report found that port records indicate that the Nissos Ios did not dock in Port Said, nor in any other Egyptian port, between October 21 and 24. However, satellite images did locate it as being anchored at Ashkelon’s EAPC terminal on October 22. The report has uncovered 57 shipments from Ceyhan to Israel, all following the same pattern: when the oil tankers leave from Ceyhan carrying crude, they declare a non-Israeli port as their destination, typically one in Egypt, and then once they navigate south, turn off the transponder that transmits their position.

While a dozen shipping companies operated along this route before the embargo took effect, the vessels currently on it belong exclusively to four firms: the Italian-Swiss Petraco and the Greek companies Minerva, Thenamaris and Kyklades. Thenamaris is owned by the Martinos family, which owns several companies that, together, constitute Greece’s largest merchant fleet, according to Forbes. For its part, Kyklades belongs to the Alafouzos family, which in turn controls a major media group close to the current conservative Greek government.

These two companies account for 85% of all trips since the embargo was declared. When asked for a response, both alleged that they do not comment on “commercial operations”, though they said that they follow all international laws and applicable sanctions. “Any adjustment to the AIS system on our ships is limited and would be implemented for security reasons and in conformity with the directives of international insurers and relevant maritime authorities,” says the legal department of Kyklades, in an email to EL PAÍS.

International Maritime Organization regulation allows for the disconnection of an AIS only in “exceptional security situations”, for example, when there is a risk of a pirate attack or missile or drone launch, says George Morris, a Vortexa market analyst. He also notes that, if port officials in Israel are notified that ships coming from Ceyhan are scheduled to call in Ashkelon and the AIS is turned off, “the authorities on the exporting side — in this case, Turkish authorities — may not be aware of the final port of discharge if it differs from the one originally declared.”

These tactics of systematically turning off or tampering with the AIS signal are typical of the so-called “phantom fleet,” a growing number of vessels used to circumvent sanctions or blockades, particularly by countries like Russia and Iran. In fact, it has been reported that some vessels operated by Kyklades on the Ceyhan-Ashkelon route have also transported sanctioned Russian oil or have been sold to companies operating the phantom fleet in violation of European directives. Thenamaris was even included, along with other Greek shipping companies, on the list of “War Sponsors” for its involvement in the trade of Russian oil, although Ukrainian authorities removed it from the list after the Martinos family decided to scale back its business dealings with Russia. Nevertheless, last year, two of the shipping company’s tankers, the Seajewel and the Seacharm, were sabotaged with limpet mines by alleged Ukrainian operatives as punishment for trading in Russian oil. The attack on the Seacharm took place right off the coast of the port of Ceyhan.

Response from Turkish government

Despite this evidence, sources from the Turkish government maintain that the allegations of an oil supply route to Israel from Turkey are “absolutely false.” “This kind of violation [through the falsification of the AIS and destination port] can happen anywhere, but Turkish authorities are very strict on the matter,” said one Turkish government source.

Separately, in an email responding to questions from EL PAÍS, the Turkish Ministry of Transportation said that the Turkish government has “a zero-tolerance policy” towards those who try to dodge the embargo. “The ships that, having carried product in our ports and declared different countries as their destination, unload their product in Israeli ports, have not been able to return to our ports and legal action has been initiated against their shipping agents over false declaration,” said the ministry. Last October, the Office of Communication of the President of the Republic announced that two ships had been banned from Turkish ports for falsifying their destination and transporting product to Haifa, Israel in defiance of the embargo. In its response to this newspaper, the Ministry of Transportation said that it could publicly share the total number of vessels that had been banned from Turkey for such practices, but underlined that “administrative and legal processes have been initiated when necessary” and “sanctions have been imposed without delay.”

For its part, the Ministry of Commerce, also in a written response, explained that, prior to each loading or unloading operation, the shipping agent (the local company that handles the ship’s affairs and represents it at each port) must sign a document certifying that neither the ship is affiliated with Israel, nor will the cargo be transported to Israel, and that, in the event of a violation of these provisions, the agent themself will bear “the costs and legal liabilities.” EL PAÍS sent the Ministry of Commerce the list of the 57 voyages detected between Ceyhan and Israel, and after examining their departure notices and export declarations in its databases, the Ministry stated that “in no case was the cargo declared as destined for Israel nor the ship’s destination as an Israeli port.”

“I find it very strange that Turkish authorities continue to deny that this trade is taking place, given the large volume involved and how clear the data is. I don’t believe they are unaware of it, but I think that the AIS issue may be a strategy so that on paper, the ships involved can avoid recording their stops at Israeli ports,” explains Louis Goddard, head of research at Data Desk, to EL PAÍS.

The Energy Embargo for Palestine report holds that, by continuing to allow the shipment of oil to Israel from its ports, Turkey is not only violating its own embargo, but also the agreement reached by the Hague Group at the Bogotá conference in July. Among the six urgent measures that signatory companies committed to putting into practice, the second is “Prevent the transit, docking, and servicing of vessels at any port…. in all cases where there is a clear risk of the vessel being used to carry arms, munitions, military fuel, related military equipment, and dual-use items to Israel.”

“While Israel intensifies its attacks across the region, committing massacres in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran, oil shipments that feed those war crimes continue arriving to Israel from Turkey,” says Nadya Tannous of the Palestinian Youth Movement, in a statement to EL PAÍS. “As much as they try to cover it up, the Turkish government will continue to be complicit in the Israeli genocidal campaign until they completely stop energy transportation to Israel.”

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