Blue Water Brief

Countries

One profile per monitored country: role, exposure, datasets, disagreements, recent events and supply-chain links. Pick a country. Venezuela’s full post-January profile is inside its page.

Nation Comparison

Pick two nations, or click countries on the map, to compare forces, budgets, readiness, nuclear status, leadership changes and elections. Blue is nation A and orange is nation B.

Oligarchs and Assets

Mecca Pact

Network Analysis

Deportations in the EU and US

Antarctica and Polar States

China Purge Count

UN Watch

Texas Border

Critical Infrastructure

Farming and Fertilizer

Blocs and Alliances

Supply Chain

Mines linked to export ports and buyers. Figures are sourced (2026 unless labeled). Mine and port pairings marked “general knowledge” are not sourced on this page, and the map is schematic: straight lines, not shipping lanes, with hand-drawn coastlines.

Chains

Score rule: 70 if every field is sourced, 55 if figures are sourced but the mine or port pairing is general knowledge, 35 or below if mostly general knowledge; minus 5 where a dataset is a single outlet. My judgment. China’s gallium, germanium, antimony and graphite are processed inside China rather than shipped as mine-to-port chains; see Trade Flows.

What to watch next (and what it would mean)

Dark Fleet & Risk

Ship-level warning signs: insurance lapses, class-society changes and port-state detentions, plus the dark fleet itself. Terms: “shadow” or “dark” fleet = tankers that move sanctioned oil outside normal insurance, class and flag oversight; “AIS dark” = transponder switched off. Counts differ by definition (see disagreements). Years are labeled where a source is not from 2026.

Why these three indicators

1. Insurance (P&I) lapses

2. Classification-society changes

3. Port state control detentions

Dark-fleet analysis

Enforcement and events

Vessel risk score

Enter what you know about one ship. The score weighs the indicators above; the weights are my judgment, not a statistical model, and a high score means “look closer”, not proof of wrongdoing.

Where sources disagree

What to watch next (and what it would mean)

Ownership Graph

Who is behind a sanctioned tanker: owner, beneficial owner, manager, flag history, class, P&I insurer, sanctions and cargo, drawn from cited public reporting only. Line style shows evidence strength. Click a box or a line for detail. Unnamed people stay unnamed where the source does not name them, and a link on the graph is not proof of wrongdoing.

Red flags found in this case

Build your own

Paste a graph as JSON (nodes and edges), then draw it. Node types: person, company, manager, vessel, name, flag, class, insurer, sanction, cargo, place, event. Evidence: rec, rep, clm, gap. Nothing is uploaded; it is drawn in your browser.

Where sources disagree

What to watch next (and what it would mean)

STS & Bunkering

Ship-to-ship (STS) transfers and bunker (ship fuel) sales are indirect signs of cargo movement. STS zones show where sanctioned or relabelled cargo changes ships; bunker sales show how many ships are calling at a hub. Neither measures cargo directly. Data are 2026 unless a row says otherwise; older-year rows are labeled and scored lower.

Known ship-to-ship zones

Bunkering hubs

How to read bunker sales as a proxy

Where sources disagree

What to watch next (and what it would mean)

Oil Reserves

Two different things. Proved reserves are oil still in the ground that can be recovered at today’s prices. Emergency or strategic stocks are oil already pumped and stored. A country can be rich in one and poor in the other. Reserve figures are EIA data through a Wikipedia list (secondary, year approximate); stock sources are named in each row. Not found means not found, not zero.

Where sources disagree

What to watch next (and what it would mean)

Sanctions

Who has sanctioned what, and how the rules changed in 2026, by authority. Vessel counts differ by list and date and are not additive. This page shows public reporting; for a legal answer use the official lists linked below.

Where enforcement leaks

Check a ship or company yourself

To check a single ship by IMO number, use the Vessel dossier on the Vessels tab.

Where sources disagree

What to watch next (and what it would mean)

Conflicts with a sea link

Forces, troop and ship movement, and money for the wars that touch shipping. Pick a conflict. Each row has a date, a source tag that links to the report, and a confidence label. Claims made by a fighting side are marked Low. Use “📍 on map” to jump to the spot. Numbers are estimates and many are old; the gaps are listed at the bottom of each conflict.

Where sources disagree

What to watch

Threat groups to watch

Armed groups that threaten ships or ports: who funds them, how many fighters they have, what they have done in 2026 and how much they threaten shipping. Fighter numbers are old estimates and are labelled by year. Locations on the map are approximate. Click a row or a chip.

Other Armed Groups (Profiles)

Groups that matter for security but are not scored for shipping risk. Click one for a brief overview.

Where sources disagree

What to watch

Arctic & Greenland

Routes, bases, troops, money and minerals in the far north, with Greenland at the centre. Pick a view. The map switches to a globe centred on the Arctic. Every row has a date, a source tag that links to the report, and a confidence label.

Where sources disagree

Global Projects and New Weapons

Megaprojects that could change how goods and energy move (pipelines, LNG, ports, canals, rail), plus new experimental aircraft, missiles, drones and ships. With countries, approximate cost, status and delays.

Currencies and Markets

World currencies, bitcoin and other e-currencies, and government bond yields, with how they link to trade and sanctions. A dated snapshot from public pages.

Military Air Watch

Reported military aircraft movements and build-ups, with who claimed what and whether anyone independent confirmed it. Includes an optional live scan.

Terms and Corrections

How to use this page, what it is and is not, and how to get a mistake fixed.

Newsletter and Account

Join the weekly email, and carry your settings between devices. No account is needed to use this page.

Book Reviews

Academic reviews of books on geopolitics, maritime and energy security, and the powers this page tracks. Read the published reviews, or submit your own for the editor to consider; see Criteria and Process first.

Power Watch

China and the CCP, plus what China, Russia and Iran say in their own words, and the Venezuela oil deal. Every row links to a page that was opened; confidence labels are Claude’s judgment.

Military Leadership

Senior officers fired, arrested, expelled, missing or killed, in China, Russia, Iran and elsewhere. Each entry says what is confirmed and what is only reported.

Drug Boat Strikes

US strikes on boats said to carry drugs in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific: what has been reported, how counts differ, and what is disputed.

Small-Volume Minerals

Rare earths, cobalt, lithium, nickel and graphite ship in containers and barely show in ship data. Customs codes, export announcements and port data, side by side.

How We Detect Anomalies

The method, the live results and the code, in the open. Nothing here is hidden: the functions printed below are the ones this page runs.

Route Deviation Index

How far ships have moved from the Red Sea route to the Cape of Good Hope route.

Port Anomalies

Which major ports are busier or quieter than normal for this time of year, from free IMF PortWatch ship-call data. Each port is compared with its own history. Tap a port to open it.

Identity & Links

How a ship’s name, flag, owner and other details change over time, and which ships share owners, managers, companies or people. Every record shows its source, method, date and confidence.

Dark Vessel Check

Match satellite radar detections against AIS positions you paste in, and flag detections with no AIS ship nearby as possible dark vessels (an indicator, not proof).

Live Ships: Finland

Real ship positions in Finnish waters from the open Digitraffic feed. It loads straight into your browser; there is no key and no server. Finland only.

Vessel Timeline

Chronological activity for one ship: port calls, AIS gaps with a dark-activity indicator, possible ship-to-ship meetings, identity changes, and the supply chain from origin to terminal. It analyzes position reports you paste in; there is no live ship feed.

Vessel Identity and Sanctions

Track a ship by its IMO number, keep its name and flag history, and screen it against sanctions lists.

Floating Storage

Oil sitting on tankers at sea: what has been reported, how it is counted, and what it may signal.

Reports and Digests

A daily report, weekly report or monthly digest of notable movements, reporting and live numbers. Copy, download, print, email or share as an image.

My Watchlist

Follow countries, chokepoints, conflicts, threat groups and vessels, and save map views. Lists stay in this browser only.

Data Freshness

How fresh each section of the briefing is. This page does not use live feeds.

Commodity view

Start from the goods, not the ships: pick a commodity to see where it passes, what is disrupted, the numbers, and where sources disagree. Compare with the Vessels tab, which starts from the ship.

Vessel view

Start from the ship class: what it carries, which gates it can use, and which reported incidents involve it. Sizes are typical industry figures from general knowledge, not sourced on this page (Medium confidence). Incidents come from sources cited elsewhere on this page.

All classes side by side

Vessel dossier: look up a ship by IMO number

This page has no live ship feed. Enter an IMO number to check it, see anything this page holds on that ship (flag, owner, manager, sanctions), and open public registries and trackers. Track history is whatever you paste in below: the tool plots it and flags gaps and impossible jumps.

Record a ship and draw its network

Track history

One position per line: 2026-05-01 06:00, latitude, longitude, note (UTC). Red dashed circles are known STS zones.

Cargo Inference

What this is: a calculator and method for estimating what a ship is carrying and how much, by fusing independent evidence and scoring confidence. What it is not: a live feed. No satellite imagery, AIS or customs records were analysed for this page; you enter the observations, and the examples are illustrative, not observed data.

Evidence sources and how much each is trusted

Weights are my judgment, not a statistical calibration. Confidence = 50% coverage (share of total weight present) + 50% agreement (1 minus the spread between estimates; 0.5 if only one source), capped at 95, minus 20 if the estimate exceeds the ship’s capacity.

1. Estimate a cargo

Evidence you have (leave blank if none):

2. What a draft cut costs in cargo (Panama)

Cargo lost ≈ tonnes per centimetre × centimetres of draft removed. Tonnes per centimetre ≈ length × beam × waterplane coefficient × water density ÷ 100. Gatún Lake is fresh water (density 1.000).

The default ship is hypothetical (near the largest size the new locks allow), and 15.24 to 14.94 m is the cut now in force (the limit was raised from 14.63 m to 14.94 m on Sep 28); a further cut to 14.48 m planned for Oct 1 was postponed on Sep 4 with no new date (see Panama tab). Real ships differ; the figure is an order of magnitude, not a manifest.

3. Cargo counts implied by figures on this page

Converted-figure confidence = the source dataset’s score minus 10 for the typical-cargo-size assumption. Cases with no dataset are scored Low (35) because the input is contested. Typical cargo sizes: VLCC 2.0M barrels, Aframax 0.7M barrels, dry-bulk 50–65 kt.

Satellite storage-tank method (not run here)

• Floating-roof tanks. The roof sits on the oil, so the gap between roof and rim, seen from the shadow inside the tank, gives the fill level. Volume = π/4 × diameter² × height × fill fraction.
• Limits. Cloud cover, revisit gaps of days, unknown tank heights and several ships loading at once. A draw-down cannot be tied to one ship without port timing.
• How to use it here. Enter the draw-down and farm capacity above; it counts as one piece of evidence with the lowest-but-one weight.

What If This Chokepoint Closed?

A scenario estimate, not a forecast. Pick a chokepoint to see the detour, the extra distance and days, and the traffic PortWatch actually records.

Chokepoints

Where sources disagree

What to watch next (and what it would mean)

Event timeline

Dated events with sources. Newest first.

Trade Flows

China export-control clock (drone and battery inputs)

Drone motors need rare-earth magnets, batteries need lithium, graphite and cobalt, and chips need gallium and germanium. Sources differ by a day on the November dates.

Where sources disagree

What to watch next (and what it would mean)

Grain flows, 2026

Wheat, corn and soybeans, with the Black Sea disruption at the centre. Newest grain data point: Sep 16, 2026. Striped bars are derived or estimated. Tags link to the article each figure came from.

Where sources disagree

What to watch next (and what it would mean)

Cable and gray-zone log

Attribution caveat: a vessel near a damaged cable is not proof of intent. Several cases ended as accidents; by mid-2026 some officials leaned toward accident over sabotage (aggregator report, unvetted).

What to watch next (and what it would mean)

Route and transit-time estimator

Common routing and rerouting options

What shippers and producers are using to work around Hormuz and the Red Sea, with current status.

Data and Credits

Where every number on this page comes from, how fresh it is, and what we know and do not know about permission to use it. This is a research page, not financial, legal, security or navigation advice.

1. Live feeds (not available on this hosted page)

The page was built to read these feeds, but a hosted page cannot reach other websites, so none of them load. They are listed for reference only. Use the original source for current values.

“Terms not yet checked” means the page owner has not yet read that provider’s terms for a public, free site. It does not mean the terms forbid it. This table will be updated as each is checked.

Privacy

This page has no analytics and no advertising, and it does not need an account. The Report an Issue form and Book Reviews submissions are saved to this page’s shared store and read by its editor; nothing else you do on it is sent to its owner. The newsletter sign-up opens an outside email service, which then holds your address under its own terms. An optional sync copies your settings into your Claude account (invited members only) and can be deleted from the Newsletter and Account tab. It saves a few things only in your own browser, on your own device: your watchlist, your pinned areas, what you had seen at your last visit (to show what is new), whether you have finished the tour, display settings, and any records you paste into the Vessel Timeline, Identity and Links or Dark Vessel Check tools. If a feature that needs a personal access token is added later, a token you paste stays only in your browser as well. Clearing this site’s data in your browser erases all of it. When you open a tab, your browser contacts the data providers listed above (for example IMF PortWatch, Open-Meteo and Digitraffic) directly, and they can see your IP address as any website you visit can; this page does not control their records.

How items are checked

Each written item links to the page it came from, and the page was opened and read before the item was added. Many items rest on a single outlet. The confidence label (High, Medium or Low) shows how well an item is supported: more than one independent source raises it, a single outlet or a claim by a party to a conflict keeps it low. This page does not independently verify items beyond the cited source, older items are not re-checked every day, and “last checked for updates” shows when the daily refresh last looked for news. If you find a mistake, use Report a problem.

How ships and companies are named

A ship or company is described as “listed by” a named list on a stated date, and the list is named. This page does not call any ship or company a sanctions evader, smuggler or criminal. Indicators such as AIS gaps, ship-to-ship meetings or name changes show where to look; they do not establish intent or wrongdoing. Where a source makes an allegation, the item names the source and its confidence is shown.

2. Written snapshots

The Situation Report timeline, conflicts, cables, sanctions rows, supply chains, reserves, leadership, and similar tabs are dated notes written from linked news and official pages. Each row names its source and links to it. Claims by a party to a conflict are marked Low confidence. Nothing is added without a page that was opened and read. “Last checked for updates” is the date the daily refresh last looked for new items; it does not mean every older item was re-verified that day. Each item shows its own date. The page is refreshed by a daily routine, and the “Prepared” date on the Situation Report shows when.

3. Data you supply

The Vessel Timeline, Identity and Links, and Dark Vessel Check tools work only on records you paste in. Their examples are invented and labelled as such. Anything you paste stays in your browser on your device.

4. What this page does not use

• Live ship tracking (AIS) is only for Finnish waters. Elsewhere, ship-level questions cannot be answered from this page’s own data.
• No Global Fishing Watch, AISStream or BarentsWatch (Norway) data. BarentsWatch needs a private login that cannot sit in a public page. If any is added, it will be listed above with its licence wording.
• No paid or private data. No satellite imagery has been analysed here.

5. How to read the indicators

• Indicator, not proof. Anomaly colours, dark-activity scores, ship-to-ship meeting flags and infrastructure-proximity flags show where to look. They do not establish intent, illegal activity or wrongdoing. Gaps and unusual traffic have ordinary causes such as weather, reception, holidays and maintenance.
• Weights and thresholds are the page owner’s judgment, not a statistical model. They are shown beside each result.
• Estimates are labelled. Detour distances come from waypoint calculations accurate to a few percent. Closure scale figures are illustrative upper bounds, not forecasts.
• Confidence labels (High, Medium, Low) describe the source and method, not the chance that something is true.

6. Errors and corrections

If you see a wrong or outdated item, use the page’s corrections feature, or tell the page owner. Wrong items will be fixed or removed and the change noted.

7. No affiliation

This page is independent. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by any organisation named here. Names and links are for attribution only.

Glossary

Plain-language meanings of the terms used on this page. Terms are also underlined where they first appear on a tab; hover, focus or tap one to see its meaning.

Methods and limits

• Claims versus measurements. Government statements are tagged Official but are political claims when they concern a live conflict. Trackers measure what they can see, and their figures are often revised upward as more ships are observed.
• AIS gaps and dark fleets. Ships can switch off transponders. Analysts infer activity from signal gaps, satellite radar and imagery, and ship-to-ship transfer patterns. Absence of a signal is not absence of a ship.
• Relabeling. Iranian and Venezuelan crude is often declared as Malaysian or Brazilian at customs, so official import tables understate sanctioned flows. Striped bars mark these estimates.
• Stockpiles. China does not publish a full breakdown of strategic and commercial crude stocks, so figures are analyst estimates from import, refinery-run and storage-tank data.
• Cable incidents. Anchor drag can be accident or tactic. Findings often take months and depend on flag-state cooperation.
• Dark fleet and risk. Fleet counts depend on definition (all shadow tankers, sanctioned vessels, EU-listed vessels, core Russian fleet), so they are shown side by side, not merged. Some sources are older than 2026 and are labeled (Atlantic Council 2025, Estonia Apr 2025, the 2024 class-switch example). The risk score weights are my judgment, not a statistical model; there is no public count of uninsured ships. Paris and Tokyo MoU figures count detentions differently, so compare trends, not levels.
• Supply chains. Figures are from the linked articles. Mine coordinates and many port pairings are general knowledge and are marked so; owners are named only where a source gave them. The map uses hand-drawn coastlines and straight lines, so it shows links, not shipping lanes. Data on Simandou, Guinea, Indonesia and Argentina are single-outlet.
• Confidence scores. Each dataset shows a score out of 100: High 80, Medium 60, Low 35, plus 10 if cross-checked, minus 15 if not re-checked in 30 days, minus 5 if some bars are estimates. It is my judgment, not a statistical probability. Cargo-inference scores use the separate rule on the Cargo Inference tab.
• Cargo Inference. The calculator turns evidence you enter into a tonnage estimate. Presets and worked cases are illustrative or converted from figures already on this page. No satellite imagery, AIS or customs records were analysed, and typical ship sizes are general industry knowledge, not sourced here.
• Derived numbers. Where a source gave barrels for a month, I divided by the days in the month to get barrels a day. Those bars are striped.
• Year labels. Where 2026 data was not found, 2025 data is shown and labeled with its year. North Korea and Russia figures rest largely on intelligence-agency claims and commercial trade blogs.
• Why “relabeled”? China’s customs records more “Malaysian” crude than Malaysia produces. Analysts say much of it is Iranian and Venezuelan oil moved ship-to-ship off Malaysia and declared as Malaysian. It is an inference from mismatched totals, not a cargo-by-cargo finding.
• Port ownership. Stakes come from company profiles, Wikipedia and trade press, and differ by source. Individuals are named only where reporting documents their ownership. Nothing here asserts anyone’s personal politics.
• Verification. Direct UN Comtrade queries were not possible from this environment. Cross-checks used Comtrade-derived pages (OEC, bank trade profiles), China customs reports, SIPRI and IEA. Rows marked “Cross-checked” say what was matched. China’s stockpile cannot be checked against primary data because none is published.
• War materials. SIPRI tracks major weapons only, so drone parts, electronics and small drones are mostly missing from official counts.
• Grain, Venezuela and Panama. Grain data ends Sep 16 and Venezuela data ends July (August and September totals not found). Panama figures are mostly trade-press summaries of Panama Canal Authority notices; the Sep 4 postponement notice and the Sep 28 advisory (A-36-2026) were read directly. USDA’s September wheat figures were not retrieved. Several grain claims rest on one outlet: the “MoLoChKa” operation name, the 172-vessel count and the 5–10 Mt worst case. Several pages had 2026 headlines but older data (one “2026” Venezuela page held 2023 figures); those were discarded.
• Snapshot. This page is not a live feed.

Situation Report

How items are checked: each item links to the page it came from, opened and read before it was added. Many rest on a single outlet, so every item carries a confidence label, and claims by a party to a conflict are always Low. Items are not independently verified, and older items are not re-checked daily. Read more

Status by area

Changed in the last 7 days

Dates coming up

What to watch next (and what it would mean)

This page does not update itself. For a daily briefing, ask Claude each morning to “update the situation report”; it will re-check the headlines and rewrite this tab. The check-date badge above turns red when the report is over 30 days old.

Undersea cables

Incident log (newest first)

What to watch next (and what it would mean)

Port ownership

Who owns and operates the biggest container ports and terminals, by nationality and individual owner. Click a name for a general reference page on the business and its background. Only documented ownership and government or regulatory involvement is shown; no personal political views or party membership are asserted, and state-owned operators list no individual.

Largest container ports, 2025

Largest terminal operators, 2025 (DynaLiners)

Contested port concessions

Operators ranked 8–10 (ICTSI, Yilport, CMA CGM) are not profiled. Ownership shares differ between sources (for example Shanghai’s direct state stake is about 44% or 61% depending on how affiliates are counted). Names link to Wikipedia; check them against company filings before relying on them.

Panama’s canal traffic, slot cuts and draft limits are on the Panama tab. The ports there (Balboa and Cristobal) sit at the two ends of the canal.

What to watch next (and what it would mean)