The Ghost Fleet Feeding Israel's War Machine: How Greek Shipping Giants Move Nigerian and Gabonese Crude Through Cyprus

Beneath the headline story of Dangote's refined jet fuel conquering European and American markets lies a far murkier trade: raw African crude, moved by opaque Greek shipping networks, quietly fuelling Israel's military campaign in Gaza through a Mediterranean transshipment hub that exists, in large part, to make provenance disappear.

The Companies Behind the Curtain
Two Greek-owned shipping firms Thenamaris and Kyklades Maritime sit at the centre of this trade. An investigation identified both companies as having moved substantial volumes of crude oil to Israel from Nigeria, Gabon, Cameroon and Venezuela (1). Their African cargoes, however, are a side business. Their principal commercial relationships run through BP and SOCAR, Azerbaijan's state oil company and co-owner of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline the single largest artery feeding Israeli refineries, supplying roughly 30 percent of the country's crude via the Turkish port of Ceyhan.

That the same vessel operators ferrying BTC crude from Ceyhan are also the ones showing up in African crude cargoes bound for Israel is not incidental. It reflects shipping architecture in which a handful of Greek-managed fleets the same companies reportedly linked to sanctioned Russian oil movements since 2022 have become the default carriers for politically sensitive cargo Israel would rather not advertise.

A Tanker Called Lipari
The clearest documented case is the crude oil tanker Lipari (IMO 9529487). Satellite and AIS tracking placed the vessel at the EAPC terminal in Ashkelon on 19 April 2024, having sailed directly from the Ima field off the Nigerian coast. The Lipari's journey was significant enough that it became the cover image for Oil Change International's "Behind the Barrel" report a direct, traceable line from Nigerian offshore waters to an Israeli military-fuel receiving terminal, with no third-country disguise required.

Not every cargo moves so cleanly. Most Nigerian, Gabonese and Congolese crude reaching Israel takes a more circuitous route and that is where Cyprus enters the picture.

Cyprus: Transshipment, Not Destination
Cyprus does not buy this oil. It launders its paper trail. Oil Change International's research found that Cyprus, alongside Greece, provided transshipment services to tankers carrying crude oil originating in Gabon, Nigeria and Kazakhstan (4). At least one cargo delivered to Israel during the tracking period was recorded with its country of origin listed simply as "Unknown" because it was loaded not at an African terminal at all, but at the Vasiliko oil storage terminal on Cyprus.

This is the mechanism investigators flag as most troubling: African crude arrives at Vasiliko, sits in storage, and re-emerges on a fresh manifest with its ownership and provenance obscured a documented method by which sensitive cargo shakes off its point of origin before making the final short hop to Ashkelon or Haifa. A second, similarly anonymised cargo in the same dataset was traced instead to the Sumed pipeline terminus in Egypt, suggesting Cyprus is not the only laundering point in the chain, but it is a recurring one.

The broader tracking methodology behind these findings is itself revealing of how much effort goes into keeping this trade dark. Analysts at Data Desk, who compiled the underlying dataset for Oil Change International, noted that tankers approaching Israel routinely switch off their Automatic Identification System (AIS) transponders for extended stretches particularly in the Port Said transshipment zone off Egypt forcing researchers to cross-reference vessel headings, transmission gaps and European Space Agency Sentinel-2 satellite imagery just to establish where a cargo actually ended up .

Not Dangote's Fuel A Different, Older Trade
It bears stating plainly, given the scale of attention Dangote's refinery has drawn as a jet fuel powerhouse to Europe, the United States and now Saudi Aramco: none of the reporting reviewed for this piece ties Dangote-refined product to Israel, Cyprus, or the Vasiliko terminal. What moves through this Greek-Cypriot network is raw, unrefined Nigerian and Gabonese crude extracted offshore, loaded onto tankers, and shipped directly into Israel's own refining system, where it becomes the jet fuel powering Israeli air force sorties and the diesel fuelling the bulldozers used in the West Bank and Gaza.

This is a distinction worth insisting on. Dangote's commercial success story and Nigeria's quieter role as a crude supplier to a state accused before the International Court of Justice of plausible genocide are two separate accounting ledgers and conflating them would let the real trade hide behind the more visible one.

The Accountability Question
Legal researchers cited in earlier reporting on this supply chain have pointed to the ICJ's July 2024 advisory opinion, which found Israel's occupation, settlement expansion and associated practices in the Palestinian territories unlawful, and which held that states are obligated not to render aid or assistance that sustains that illegality. Nigeria's crude has continued to reach Israeli terminals well after that ruling via both direct shipments, like the Lipari's April 2024 run, and via the Cyprus transshipment route documented in the Data Desk dataset.

For Abuja, the exposure is reputational as much as legal: a country that postures as a leading voice for African solidarity with Palestine, and whose own citizens have died in unrelated conflicts abroad, is also through commercial intermediaries it does not appear to control or perhaps even track helping keep Israeli aircraft fuelled. Whether Nigerian authorities have visibility into where NNPC-linked or joint-venture crude ultimately lands once it leaves Nigerian waters remains an open question this reporter intends to pursue with Abuja's petroleum regulators.

Mustapha Bature Sallama.
Medical/ Science Communicator,
Private Investigator, Criminal investigation and Intelligence Analysis.
International Conflict Management and Peace Building.USIP
mustysallama@gmail.com
+233-555-275-880

References
Middle East Eye, "Exclusive: Greek ships secretly supplying Israel with oil and military cargo" https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/exclusive-greek-ships-secretly-supplying-israel-oil-and-military-cargo

Middle East Eye, "Countries shipping fuel to Israel could be complicit in war crimes, experts say" https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/countries-shipping-fuel-israel-could-be-complicit-war-crimes-experts-say

Oil Change International, "Behind the Barrel: New Insights into the Countries and Companies Behind Israel's Fuel Supply" https://oilchange.org/publications/behind-the-barrel-new-insights-into-the-countries-and-companies-behind-israels-fuel-supply/

Oil Change International / Data Desk, "New Data Exposes Countries Fueling Genocide in Gaza" https://oilchange.org/news/countries-fueling-gaza-genocide/

Data Desk, "Oil supply to Israel" (technical annex) https://docs.datadesk.eco/public/oil-to-israel/

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