Reuters Investigation: Myanmar Disguised Iranian Jet Fuel as South African Diesel in a $15.8 Million Sham Contract
Reuters published an investigation on Monday, October 26, reporting for the first time how Myanmar disguised its purchases of sanctioned Iranian jet fuel: in December 2025, the U.S.-sanctioned tanker Reef arrived in Myanmar waters carrying some 113,000 barrels of fuel backed by sham paperwork for a South African diesel trade that never happened.
Myanmar-based energy broker Dynamic Wave had signed a $15.8 million sales contract with Thailand's Tawan-Oil Trading to supposedly take delivery of a similar amount of South African diesel. But there was no such trade between South Africa and Myanmar in 2025, according to data from the United Nations and Vortexa, a shipping and energy data provider. Based on records of fuel shipments to Myanmar, satellite images and analysis by SynMax Intelligence, which tracked the tanker's journey from the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas, Reuters concluded that Reef was in fact carrying jet fuel from Iran.
The United States imposed targeted sanctions on Myanmar's jet-fuel industry in 2023, citing the military's deadly bombing campaign against civilian targets, and all purchasers of Iranian oil and fuel are also exposed to sweeping American sanctions. Days before Reef arrived, Myanmar's foreign exchange regulator told Dynamic Wave's client in a November 30 letter seen by Reuters that it would issue import documentation labeling the delivery as diesel instead of jet fuel, and authorized Dynamic Wave and the client, National Energy Prime Aviation Services Company, to pay Tawan. The client is part-owned by Myanmar's military-backed government. Neither Dynamic Wave nor its client responded to Reuters questions; spokespeople for Myanmar's military-backed government and foreign exchange regulator and for Iran's foreign ministry also did not return requests for comment, and the U.S. Treasury did not respond to questions about jet-fuel shipments between Iran and Myanmar.
Justice for Myanmar, which shared documents including the sales contract with Reuters, published a report on Monday concluding that Myanmar's junta was importing jet fuel mislabeled as diesel; the group said it obtained the documents from a junta-run server that was briefly publicly accessible, and Reuters found that delivery dates and fuel quantities matched shipment records it reviewed separately. Tehran was the Myanmar military's primary supplier of jet fuel between October 2024 and December 2025, with much of the trade carried out by the tankers Reef, since renamed Maris, and Noble, Reuters reported. A second contract in May 2025 had Dynamic Wave agree to buy 202,000 barrels of purported South African diesel from Tawan for $26 million, payable into Tawan's account at Thailand's Siam Commercial Bank; the invoice's listed fuel density matched jet-fuel specifications rather than diesel sold in Southeast Asia, according to Joshua Heyne, a jet-fuel expert at Washington State University, and data from Platts, and the price was more than 50% above a global diesel benchmark. Noble called at Yangon on June 17, 2025, carrying just under 200,000 barrels of jet fuel loaded at Bandar Abbas, while transmitting location signals that made its destination appear to be Chittagong in Bangladesh, according to SynMax.
Tawan was identified by United Nations experts in a 2024 report as a jet-fuel supplier to Myanmar's military, and Siam Commercial Bank was described in that report as a major facilitator of Myanmar military procurement; the bank said after the report's release that it adheres to anti-money-laundering laws and that its Myanmar-related transactions were legitimate and not connected to the arms trade. The bank, Tawan and the Bank of Thailand did not respond to Reuters questions for this report. Myanmar's generals seized power in 2021 from the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi, sparking a civil war in which, the United Nations said in August, the military has killed thousands of people, including many civilians, in aerial assaults; Myanmar's foreign ministry has said the military exercises maximum restraint to avoid civilian harm. Reuters reported earlier this month that jet-fuel shipments between Iran and Myanmar have continued this year.
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：停靠在炼油厂码头的原油油轮（资料图，非涉案油轮）。摄影：Calistemon，CC BY-SA 4.0，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / A crude oil tanker at a refinery jetty (file photo; not one of the tankers named in the report). Photo by Calistemon, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
