Oil leaks from stranded shadow tanker Caroline Bezengi off Oman appear to have stopped
Satellite imagery of 26 October shows no trace of the slick; no offtake tanker has yet arrived at Jazirat Al Qibliyyah
The salvage of the Aframax tanker Caroline Bezengi off Oman appears to have reached its first milestone: the light traces of oil seen leaking from the wreck the previous week were no longer visible in satellite imagery of the site on 26 October.
The Cameroon-flagged tanker remains hard aground on rocks off the south-west tip of Jazirat Al Qibliyyah. She was hit off Yemen on 8 June by what is believed to have been a limpet mine, after transiting the Suez Canal on 30 May and leaving the Maritime Security Transit Corridor. She was laden with crude loaded at Novorossiysk for Gujarat. The ship is sanctioned by the EU, the UK and the US, and has a past association with Russian state shipowner Sovcomflot. Russia's permanent representative to the IMO has called speculation about whether she belongs to the Russian dark fleet "pointless".
Neither Ambrey, which is coordinating the salvage, nor Oman's Ministry of Transport, Communications and Information Technology has issued an update. The leak was most likely brought under control by pumping oil from damaged tanks into intact ones; last month a Royal Air Force of Oman NH90 helicopter winched pumps onto the raised deck at the stern. Conditions now suit the work, with light seas, a wind of about 2.3 metres per second and a moderate swell expected to hold for a week.
Can the tanker be refloated?
Several support vessels are on station, but no offtake tanker has yet appeared to take off the remaining cargo. AIS shows the EDT-operated multipurpose offshore vessel EDT Kennedy leaving Duqm on 22 October, and a ship of her length is now off the island; the Dutch-flagged tug Jif Vanguard has also been hove to close to the wreck. Refloating is unlikely but possible if the tanker is lightened. She has settled since the grounding and has probably been holed further on the rocks, so emptying her tanks would still leave the hull in place.
The crew were taken off without injury about four days after the explosion, reportedly by the Aruba-flagged Noble Walker, another sanctioned, Russia-linked tanker that was also carrying Russian oil to India. With crude above $100 a barrel, the cargo still on board is worth more than when the ship went aground.
This story is part of the Maritime Briefing of 30 October 2026.
