Tanker Carrying Russian Oil Hit With Mysterious Blasts, Italian Prosecutors Open Terrorism Investigation

A Genoese prosecutor has ordered a terrorism investigation after two explosions hit a tanker loaded with Russian crude oil anchored in an Italian port, the government news platform RAI reported on Friday.

Investigators based in the city of Savona, between Genoa and the French border, will collect evidence about the possible attack taking place on Wednesday. Other Italian media said the possible sabotage attack took place on Feb. 14 while the Seajewel was anchored in a buoy field in the Savona port.

News reports said there were no injuries and no oil was spilled. The Seajewel, a relatively small tanker at 245 meters (804 feet) long was on Friday morning apparently anchored and motionless about one kilometer (0.62 miles) east of Savona port, inside Italian territorial waters, the marine tracker vesselfinder.com showed.

The tanker, according to open-source ship-tracking platforms, had arrived in Savona from Algeria. The crew heard “two loud bangs” 20 minutes apart, and then observed flooding via hull sections bent inwards by an explosion, the newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano reported.

A Savona port authority statement said the explosions took place during trans-shipment operations and that port workers observed “some anomalies, which are still to be clarified, in the unloading procedures,” the article said.

A failure of safety equipment was a possible cause of the explosions, but failure of safety equipment or human error had not been ruled out, according to the report. Coast Guard service personnel and operators from Italy’s elite commando frogman unit Comsubmin may participate in the investigation, the article said.

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The newspaper Corriere Della Sera, in an analysis published on Thursday, said the Genoa District Anti-Mafia Directorate had opened an investigative file for “shipwreck aggravated by terrorism.” According to that major Italian publication, observers saw killed fish following the two reportedly low-order explosions, and that the hull plates at one blast site had bent inward around a break 120 centimeters by 70 centimeters. Forensic experts will analyze the dead fish for possible evidence of underwater explosives, the article said.

The Seajewel is owned by a Greek company and was loaded with Russian crude oil for export to Europe in evasion of sanctions on Russia, the article said. The shipping news publication TradeWinds reported the company is Thenmaris, an Athens-headquartered ship management firm operating 93 vessels, among them 51 tankers worldwide. Corporate publications said the Seajewel is double-hulled, has a deadweight of 108,888 tons and a capacity 127,525 cubic meters of product.

Thenamaris also operates the Seacharm, a Marshall Islands-flagged tanker damaged by an explosion while near the Turkish oil transport port Ceyhan on Jan 17-18. International ship tracking showed that vessel anchored off shore in Savona, Italy, a few kilometers from the Seajewel.

International shipping information platforms have suggested an explosion hitting the Liberia-flagged chemical-product tanker Grace Ferrum off the Libyan coast in February may be part of a campaign by unknown persons or state actors to undermine the operations of Russia’s shadow tanker fleet. The Athens-based news platform Greek City Times reported a Cypriot company called Cymare was the Grace Ferrum’s operator. Reportedly, the Grace Ferrum suffered substantial damage from the explosion and requires salvage. Ship tracking platforms on Friday showed the vessel at anchor off shore from the Algerian port Tripoli.

According to ship tracking data and industry sources cited by the Reuters news agency all three tankers – the Seajewel, the Seacharm and the Grace Ferrum – had visited Russian ports prior to entering the Mediterranean and subsequently being hit by unexplained blasts.

The most notable possible attack against a Russian freight vessel operating in Mediterranean waters took place on Dec. 23, 2024, when an unexplained explosion took place in the engine room of the Russian cargo ship Ursa Major off the Spanish coast. Two crew died and the ship sank. The ship was operated by the Russian military company Oboronlogisitics, whose management in a statement claimed the loss was the result of a “targeted terrorist attack.”

According to open source tracking data, the ship’s main mission in recent years had been to move weapons and military supplies between Russian homeland ports and Russian overseas contingents in Syria.

The European Union on Wednesday approved its 16th package of sanctions against Russia, targeting Russian aluminum exports, 13 banks, individual Russian ports and airports, and blacklisting 73 tankers participating in Russian “shadow fleet” operations.