Economics
Venezuela Is Secretly Exporting Millions of Barrels of Oil
- Vessels increasingly turn off transponders to avoid tracking
- Cloaked tankers provide crucial revenue to sanctioned nations
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The Dragon, a massive oil tanker flying the Liberian flag, is supposed to be floating somewhere off the coast of France, according to its last GPS signal.
Instead, it’s currently thousands of miles away in Venezuela where, under contract for the Russian state-oil giant Rosneft Oil Co PJSC, it loaded 2 million barrels of oil, according to data compiled by Bloomberg and shipping reports. How’s that possible? Because the ship’s transponders were turned off before it slipped into Venezuelan waters, the data shows.