Oil tankers near Iran appear to be in rural Russia

The Front Tyne oil tanker was sailing through the Gulf between Iran and the United Arab Emirates when just past 9:40 am shiptracking data appeared to show the massive vessel in Russia, in fields better known for barley and sugar beets.

By 4:15 pm on Sunday, the ship's erratic signals indicated it was in southern Iran near the town of Bidkhun, before later placing it back and forth across the Gulf.

Mass interference since the start of the conflict between Israel and Iran has affected nearly 1,000 ships in the Gulf, according to Windward, a shipping analysis firm.

A collision involving tankers south of the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping lane for the world's oil, occurred on Tuesday with both vessels catching fire.

One of them, the Front Eagle, a sister ship of the Front Tyne, and like it, more than three football pitches long, appeared to be onshore in Iran on June 15, data from commodity data platform Kpler showed.

"There is usually no jamming in the Strait of Hormuz and now there is a lot," said Ami Daniel, chief executive of Windward. "The culmination of all that is higher risk. It's a hot area... if you don't geolocate, there's a bigger chance you'll have an accident."

Ships are required to indicate their location and are fitted with transmitters similar to GPS called an AIS, or Automatic Identification System, that send regular signals on location, speed and other data. Jamming disrupts these signals.