Tanker

A driver of a tanker truck died on Wednesday after losing control of his vehicle and crashing into a concrete divider on the Thessaloniki-Athens highway near Pieria in northern Greece.

A total of 41,112 vessels passed through Turkey's Bosphorus Strait in 2019, according to official data.

The number of vessels using the strait was unchanged with the previous year's figures of 41,103, the country's Transportation and Infrastructure Ministry announced.

An oil company registered in Cyprus has been blacklisted by US officials who blocked a total of four vessels for transporting Venezuelan oil to Cuba.
According to Reuters, Caroil Transport Marine Ltd was among a number of companies accused of continuing "to circumvent sanctions by receiving oil shipments from Venezuela."

Iranian tanker Adrian Darya, at the centre of a dispute between Washington and Tehran, has changed course away from the Turkish coast, Refinitiv ship tracking data showed on Thursday.

The United States will aggressively enforce its sanctions to prevent the private sector from assisting an Iranian oil tanker that is traveling through the Mediterranean and that Washington wants seized, a State Department official said on Thursday.

Greece will not provide assistance in delivering oil to Syria to an Iranian tanker now sailing eastward through the Mediterranean, Deputy Foreign Minister Miltiadis Varvitsiotis said on Wednesday.
"We have sent a clear message that we would not want to facilitate the trafficking of this oil to Syria in any instance," Varvitsiotis told Greece's ANT1 television.

Greece's Foreign Ministry is "monitoring closely" developments concerning the Iranian tanker and "is in contact, through diplomatic channels, with the US," according to diplomatic sources cited by state-run news agency ANA-MPA on Tuesday.

The same sources said the US's view on the issue is well-known and concern all states and ports in the Mediterranean.

The United States has conveyed its "strong position" to the Greek government about an Iranian tanker that sailed for Greece on Monday after it was freed from detention off Gibraltar and Washington says is carrying oil to Syria, a State Department official said.

No "formal request" has been submitted so far to Greek authorities by the the Iranian tanker wanted by US authorities to dock at the port of Kalamata or any other port, Shipping Minister Yiannis Plakiotakis said on Tuesday.

An Iranian supertanker with $130 million worth of light crude oil that the US suspects is tied to a sanctioned organization has left Gibraltar and is heading east into the Mediterranean Sea, with its next destination reported to be Greece.