Shanghai Xuanrun Shipping

Shanghai Xuanrun Shipping is a Chinese shipping company that owns at least two US OFAC-sanctioned tankers, the Rich Starry and the Murlikishan. Both vessels transited the Strait of Hormuz in the first 24 hours of CENTCOM's blockade, on 13 and 14 April 2026 respectively, carrying cargoes that the blockade was ostensibly designed to prevent from reaching market. Neither transit was interdicted.

The company's vessels operate in a segment of the global tanker market sometimes called the dark fleet: operators who continue moving sanctioned cargoes, typically Iranian-origin crude, petroleum products or methanol, by routing them through non-sanctioned ports and registering under flags that reduce OFAC enforcement exposure. Shanghai Xuanrun's vessels are formally designated, meaning US persons and companies are prohibited from transacting with them, but the designations do not give the US Navy an automatic boarding authority when the operational framework (in this case CENTCOM's order) excludes non-Iranian port traffic.

The back-to-back transits gave practical evidence of how the enforcement gap in the CENTCOM blockade order works to sanctioned operators' advantage: non-sanctioned commercial shippers suspended transits while designated Chinese vessels kept sailing, receiving a structural competitive advantage. Windward separately documented 14 vessels using scrapped-ship registry identities in the Strait at the same time, a dark-fleet fraud whose economics improve when non-sanctioned traffic retreats.