How to read an OFAC, UK or EU vessel entry

An OFAC vessel entry

In a Recent Actions notice, a newly designated vessel is printed as a single run-on line. Structurally it is:

NAME (CALL SIGN) Vessel Type Flag flag; Secondary sanctions risk: …;
Vessel Registration Identification IMO 9945136 (vessel) [PROGRAM-TAG]
(Linked To: OWNING COMPANY NAME).

Reading it field by field:

Name. In capitals, at the start. Former names appear elsewhere in the SDN entry as aliases marked “f.k.a.”.

Call sign in parentheses. Assigned by the flag state, so it changes with the flag.

Vessel type and flag, printed as free text. The flag is the flag OFAC recorded at designation, not necessarily today’s.

Secondary sanctions risk, where the program carries it. This is the sentence that makes non-US banks and insurers cautious.

IMO number, introduced by “Vessel Registration Identification”. Note that company entries can carry “Identification Number IMO” followed by seven digits, which is an IMO company number, not a ship.

The marker (vessel), which is how you tell a hull from a company in the plain-text notices.

Program tag in square brackets, such as [RUSSIA-EO14024] or [IRAN-EO13902]. This is the legal basis in shorthand.

“Linked To”, naming the designated party the vessel is connected to.

What is missing is the reason. The SDN entry does not explain why. For that you need the Treasury press release published the same day, which this site links from the vessel timeline where one exists.

A UK ship entry

The UK publishes structured records, and ship entries are the richest of the three regimes.

A designation carries a unique identifier such as RUS2176, a regime name (“The Russia (Sanctions) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019”), a designation date, a designation source (UK or UN), and a sanctions imposed field which for ships usually reads “Shipping sanctions”.

Then a ship-details block: IMO number, current believed flag, previous flags, type of ship, tonnage, length, year built.

The valuable field is the statement of reasons, written in prose. A typical one reads that the ship “is involved in carrying oil or oil related products that originated in Russia from Russia to a third country”. That is the authority’s own account of why the hull was specified, and it is quotable.

Two formatting quirks to know. The IMO number appears as IMO9826902 without a space, or occasionally as bare digits. And a minority of entries name the ship in the form IMO 9058713 ("AVAX"), where the quoted string is the name.

An EU Annex XLII entry

The EU entry is a table row, and it is the sparsest of the three:

No. | Vessel name | IMO number | Grounds for inclusion | Date of application
38  | Galaxy      | 9826902    | Article 3s(2), point (b): transport crude oil …  | 17.12.2024

No. is the row number in the annex, which shifts as the annex is amended, so it is not a stable identifier.

Vessel name may carry a parenthetical “formerly” with a previous name.

IMO number, seven bare digits, is the only stable key in the row.

Grounds for inclusion cite a point of Article 3s(2): defence-related transport, carrying Russian oil while practising irregular and high-risk shipping practices, supporting the Russian energy sector, or acting against Ukraine’s economic subsistence.

Date of application is when the listing bites, in day.month.year form.

Note what is absent: no flag, no type, no tonnage, no owner. An EU-only listing tells you almost nothing about the ship. That is why this site cross-references the EU rows against the US and UK records by IMO number, and shows you which authority each particular came from.

What to trust

Trust the IMO number. It is the only field all three publish consistently and the only one that does not drift.

Treat flags as “as at designation”. Registries change faster than lists.

Treat tonnage carefully. Deadweight and gross tonnage are different quantities, and not every list labels which it means.

Treat ownership as a statement by the authority, on the date it published. It is not a live corporate record.

Read dates from the right field. OFAC’s designation date sits in the list file and its notices; the UK gives a designation date and a last-updated date, which are different things; the EU gives a date of application.

Where this site puts each field

Vessel pages here keep the provenance visible. Each row in the name, flag and ownership tables carries the source that stated it, and each listing row carries the authority, program, measure type and stated reason. If two authorities disagree — a different flag, a different name — both are shown rather than one being silently chosen. The one place a choice is made is the headline name and flag, which follow the most recently dated listing; how we build a vessel history explains that rule and its limits.