Where the lists disagree: 1,174 hulls listed by one authority alone

The counts in this post are a snapshot. The disagreements page recomputes all of them every night, with the vessels behind each number.

Coverage of shadow-fleet sanctions tends to describe the West acting together. Against specific hulls, the data shows something looser.

The shape of it

This database holds 2,087 vessels from eight authorities. Of those, 1,174 are listed by exactly one authority. 721 are listed by three or more.

The single-authority group is dominated by the United States, with 1,206 hulls listed by OFAC alone, a figure that includes the Iran, Venezuela and North Korea trades the European lists barely touch. At the other end, 70 hulls are listed by the EU and by nobody else, and 12 are listed only by Switzerland, Canada, Australia or New Zealand.

The allied lists are more substantial than their public profile suggests: 804 hulls carry a listing from at least one of those four countries.

Why it happens

Four reasons, none of them a failure.

Different instruments. The US blocks property interests; the EU bans port access and services; the UK specifies ships for shipping sanctions. They are not built to produce identical outputs.

Different policy scope. The US programs span four sanctioned exporters. The EU and UK vessel lists are dominated by one.

Different tempo. The EU lists in packages agreed among member states. The US can designate on any working day. That alone produces clustering on one side and a steady drip on the other.

Different risk appetites. Each authority carries its own litigation exposure for designating a vessel, and weighs it differently.

What it means for a specific ship

The only useful question about a hull is jurisdiction-specific: is this vessel listed by the authority whose law binds me, today?

A listing elsewhere is a reason to look harder, not an answer. A vessel listed by the EU alone is trading lawfully in the United States and the United Kingdom. A vessel listed by OFAC alone can enter EU ports, while its counterparties worldwide weigh the secondary-sanctions exposure that makes banks cautious regardless of formal jurisdiction.

That gap between formal reach and practical reach is why the raw overlap counts understate the US position and overstate the EU one. The statistics page carries the current numbers, including the median gap in days between one authority acting and another following on the same hull, and divergence between allies works through the consequences.