Around 20 empty Iranian oil tankers anchored off Sri Lanka are running short of food, fuel and drinking water, after Sri Lankan service providers stopped resupplying them rather than risk United States sanctions.

Hiru News reported on Friday, citing a Wall Street Journal report, that the vessels are drifting in international waters with their engines idled while provisions fall to dangerous levels. Local shipping agents and repair crews say they cannot obtain official clearance to service the ships, even though masters have made urgent requests for food and water.

Washington’s warning, and a compliance course in Colombo

The pressure is traced to August, when the US Embassy in Colombo told the government that roughly 20 Iranian vessels were operating off the coast and cautioned that Sri Lankan companies supplying provisions or services could face secondary sanctions. The Sri Lanka Ports Authority’s position, as reported by Hiru, is that servicing Iranian-flagged ships is not prudent.

Hiru also reported that US officials recently ran a three-day training programme in Colombo for more than 40 Sri Lankan representatives on sanctions compliance. The Foreign Ministry has acknowledged humanitarian concerns about the crews, but maritime service providers are declining the work.

Nothing has left in six weeks

Vessel-tracking by the advocacy group United Against Nuclear Iran, published on 1 October, names all 20 ships and shows how static the cluster has become.

When LankaNewz first reported the anchorage on 26 August, UANI had listed 17 empty Iran-flagged tankers off Galle. All 17 are still off Sri Lanka six weeks later. Three more — DREAM II, HALTI and STREAM — have joined them. None has left.

The fleet has moved, however. UANI says most of the ships quit the Galle anchorage from 23 August, and that by 29 September many had relocated to another Sri Lankan outer-port-limits anchorage further north along the coast, broadcasting their positions only intermittently. Satellite imagery on 1 October confirmed most of those positions.

All are in ballast, emptied by ship-to-ship transfers of Iranian crude, and cannot sail home because of the US blockade of Iranian ports reimposed in July.

Counts that are not the same count

Figures across this story have never matched, because outlets and agencies count different things. UANI’s 20 are Iran-flagged tankers. When Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath addressed the issue on 8 September, he put 47 vessels in international waters more than 24 nautical miles out — a wider boundary that also takes in sanction-evading “shadow fleet” ships. In late August the Foreign Ministry said Sri Lanka bore no responsibility for the vessels and was providing them no facilities.

Not reported

Neither report says how long the crews’ supplies will last, how many seafarers are aboard, whether any medical emergency has arisen, or whether Iran has made a formal representation to Colombo. Neither names the Ports Authority official whose position is quoted, gives the date of the US compliance training, nor says whether the Foreign Ministry has issued the written guidance that port-sector officials have been seeking.

Of the verified Sri Lankan newsrooms LankaNewz tracks, only Hiru News had filed its own account of this development when this article was published. The Daily Mirror’s latest-news listing, NewsFirst and EconomyNext carried nothing on it, and Ada Derana remains unreachable.

Update, October 2: The Daily Mirror has since filed its own account, published at 9.02 a.m. Colombo time, making this a second verified newsroom on the story. It adds several points the first reports did not carry.

It places the anchorage about 15 miles off Sri Lanka’s southwestern coast, and dates the Wall Street Journal report both accounts rest on to Wednesday. It says the tankers are drifting with engines idled after delivering sanctioned Iranian oil, primarily to China — the destination of the cargo, which neither earlier source named.

The Daily Mirror also widens the picture beyond Sri Lanka: dozens of Iranian or Iran-linked vessels have remained in waters around Sri Lanka and Malaysia since July, when the United States reimposed its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, and it notes Reuters had previously reported the same two-country pattern. It attributes the squeeze to the Trump administration’s campaign of additional sanctions on Iran and warnings to countries and companies trading with it.

On the vessel count it takes the same line this article does, citing Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath’s September figure of 47 vessels identified in the vicinity, of which some are Iranian, all in international waters — consistent with the different counting bases set out above. It carries nothing new on the crews’ supplies, and no response from Iran or the Ports Authority.