Iranian tanker Adrian Darya switches destination to Turkey, data shows

The Iranian tanker at the centre of a confrontation between the US and Iran has switched destination. According to date from the ship tracking website Marine Traffic, the ship is now heading to Turkey instead of southern Greece.

DW reports that the ship-tracking website MarineTraffic.com showed the tanker, which is carrying 2.1 million barrels of Iranian crude oil worth some $130 million (€115 million), as being south of Sicily, and has updated its listed destination to the port of Mersin in southern Turkey. The site estimated that the tanker would arrive in Mersin on August 31.

Sailors can enter any destination into the Automatic Identification System. Mersin may not be the ship’s final destination. Mersin is around 200 kilometers (125 miles) northwest of a refinery in Baniyas, Syria. When the Adrian Darya 1 was released, Iranian officials had pledged not to send the oil to Syria.

The Adrian Darya, formerly called Grace 1, was released from detention off Gibraltar after a five-week standoff over whether it was carrying Iranian oil to Syria in violation of European Union sanctions in mid-August, Reuters reports.

Reuters / DW