Sanctioned Russian Tanker Caroline Bezengi Spills Oil Onto Oman's Coast After Two Months Grounded

A tanker loaded with sanctioned Russian crude has been sitting grounded off Oman for six weeks, and the oil is now washing up on the country's beaches. The ship is called the Caroline Bezengi. It first reported trouble off Yemen on June 8, 2026, after what maritime security sources described to Reuters as an apparent onboard blast. Nobody has claimed responsibility. The vessel ran aground near Oman's Hallaniyat Islands on June 30, and it's been leaking ever since.

Oman's Environment Authority confirmed Wednesday that oil has reached the mainland, hitting beaches near Ras Madrakah and threatening up to 40 kilometers of coastline, according to Al Jazeera. Oil is also expected to reach Masirah Island's southern coast within hours of that announcement, the agency said, affecting another 10 to 20 kilometers of shoreline.

How big is this spill? Depends who you ask, and that gap matters. Omani officials put the slick at roughly 390 to 400 square kilometers, according to gcaptain, which cited the country's Environment Authority. Greenpeace estimated it at around 600 square kilometers based on satellite imagery, per the same gcaptain report. John Amos, an oil spill specialist and CEO of the satellite-monitoring nonprofit SkyTruth, told Reuters the slick covers more than 2,000 square kilometers based on his own review of imagery obtained by the wire service. That represents a significant discrepancy between the Omani government's number and the independent satellite analyst's number.

The ship itself was carrying somewhere between 800,000 barrels, per Reuters reporting cited by the Independent and Straits Times, and nearly 1 million barrels, according to gcaptain and oilgasleads.com. Either way, if the tanker fully breaks apart, Amos told Reuters that could mean a spill of 40 to 50 million gallons, big enough to rival the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska.

The response side presents major complications. The Caroline Bezengi is 25 years old, built in 2001, and it's not insured by any recognized Western insurer, according to Reuters reporting carried by both japantoday and Straits Times. The IOPC Funds, the intergovernmental body that normally helps pay for tanker spill cleanups, told Reuters it won't be involved because the incident is being treated as an "act of war" rather than an ordinary accident. When there's no war exclusion, insurers pay. When there is one, they don't.

Why an act of war? Because this ship didn't get into trouble in a vacuum. It loaded Russian crude at Novorossiysk on the Black Sea in April, sailed through the Suez Canal in late May, then passed near Yemen, where Iran-aligned Houthi militants have been drawn into the broader U.S.-Israel-Iran conflict, according to Reuters reporting used across multiple outlets. Ukraine has also been striking so-called shadow fleet vessels carrying Russian oil, and the Caroline Bezengi is part of that fleet. Nobody has publicly claimed the June 8 blast, but the ship was sailing through two active war zones when it happened.

Ownership is murky too. Shipping records list Rentoor Shipmanagement as owner and Villar Shipmanagement as operator, both based in China, according to the open-source sanctions database OpenSanctions as reported by Al Jazeera. The vessel most recently flew Cameroon's flag, though oilgasleads.com reported it was among 39 tankers recently stripped from Cameroon's ship registry. The tanker is currently sanctioned by the European Union, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Canada and Ukraine.