Hijacked Tanker Showed Years of Tracking Gaps Before Pirate Seizure

A tanker now held by Somali pirates has a years-long pattern of disappearing from vessel tracking systems for extended periods, adding a further dimension to a piracy wave that has left as many as six vessels in pirate hands.

The Tanzanian-flagged tanker Asana, seized off Yemen in mid-July and now believed held off Somalia, has transmitted no position since 05:22 UTC on 17 July 2026. That blackout fits an established pattern rather than an exception.

Data from Pole Star Global shows the vessel carries a "Critical" gap rating, with tracking gaps of 102, 96, 48, 37, 32, 29, 27 and 24 days recorded across 2024 and 2025 — well before the hijacking.

The ship has also passed through several operators over the past decade. Its current owner, Exon Energy Inc, is not sanctioned. A previous operator and manager, Russia-based Valkur LLC, which ran the ship from 2015 to 2023, is now listed under French, Monaco, European Union and Swiss sanctions tied to Russia's war in Ukraine. Those designations were imposed years after the company's link to the vessel ended.

The pattern matters commercially because the same characteristics that make a vessel attractive to sanctions-evading trades — opaque and shifting ownership, long AIS silences, flags of convenience — also strip away the layers of monitoring that would otherwise raise an alarm when a ship stops reporting.

A vessel with a documented history of month-long tracking gaps generates no immediate alert when it goes dark under duress. For naval task forces and commercial security teams working from AIS-derived pictures, the distinction between a routine blackout and a hijacking is not visible in the data.

The Asana is one of several vessels held following a resurgence of piracy in the Gulf of Aden and surrounding waters, which has drawn warnings from the International Maritime Organization over the treatment of captive seafarers.