The chief executive of Stena Bulk, the firm that owns the British-flagged tanker Stena Impero which was detained by Iran on July 19, told a Swedish public broadcaster that the vessel will be released on Sunday.
Erik Hanell, speaking to SVT, said, “We have received information now this morning that it seems like they will release the ship Stena Impero within a few hours. So we understand that the political decision to release the ship has been taken.”
Hanell later added, “We hope to be able to head out within a few hours, but we dont want to anticipate events. We want to see that the ship sails out of Iranian territorial waters," Hanell told SVT. A spokesperson from Stena Bulk, Will Marks, declined to confirm the ship’s possible release, telling Reuters, "The vessel is still being held and the negotiations are ongoing, and until we have official confirmation and the vessel is lifting up its anchor and sailing out of Iranian waters we can't confirm anything else.”
Just the day before, Hanell had met with Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, in Stockholm with the intention of securing the ship’s release. On Wednesday, Hanell issued a statement saying “A constructive dialogue was had and we share dinformation around the case,” adding that it was important tfor the shipping firm to stress the importance of releasing the crew members as well as the ship itself.
18 Indians were on board the Stena Impero, of whom seven were released on September 4. The ship had a total crew strength of 23, with the remaining members hailing from Russia, Latvia and the Philippines. 16 crew members had to remain on board the ship as part of the Minimum Safe Manning Certificate (MSMC) requirements.
The move comes as Iran is set to introduce a ‘Hormuz Peace Initiative’ at the United Nations General Assembly session, as tensions between Western allies and Iran escalated. Recently, the United States led the formation of an international maritime task force to secure the straits of Hormuz, through which a significant portion of the world’s oil (21 per cent) is shipped.
Tensions with Iran spiked after a deadly attack on a Saudi Aramco oil-processing facility that took out half the company’s oil production, prompting a surge in global oil prices.
The Stena Impero was detained in July two weeks after British authorities in Gibraltar detained an Iranian vessel, the Grace I, on suspicion that it was illegally transporting oil to Syria in defiance of international sanctions.
The Grace I was released in August, after which point it was renamed as the Adrian Darya.
