Reuters’ Jessica Donati and Emma Farge on Wednesday spot some odd goings-on in the Tunisian port of La Skhira:
Oil trading and shipping sources said at least 120,000 tones of gasoline had arrived so far this month at La Skhira for ship-to-ship transfers, a figure that amounts to nearly half of Tunisia’s annual imports.
The UN, US and EU sanctions on Libya are some of the tightest in living memory, but as with any restriction limited to specific individuals and entities they are not inescapable. Here’s Donati and Farge again:
Muammar Gaddafi’s government is circumventing international sanctions to import gasoline to western Libya by using intermediaries who transfer the fuel between ships in Tunisia.
One intermediary company, Hong Kong-based Champlink,previously unknown to the oil trading community, has sought a transaction for fuel delivery into Libya, and European oil traders said they had been approached by other such firms.
In a fax, obtained by Reuters, Champlink approached trading firms with an “urgent” request stating, “we have been appointed as procurers for end user in Libya and looking for ready shipments for gasoline.”
The fax proposed either shipping directly to the western Libyan port of Zawiyah, near the capital Tripoli, or to Tunisia’s La Skhira, to be transferred onto a waiting tanker.
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