The United Kalavryta, an oil tanker bearing a cargo amounting to $100 million, disappeared off the radar near the Texas coast. The vessel, also referred as the United Kalavrvta, is carrying 8 million barrels from the Iraqi region of Kurdistan. The tanker is the flashpoint in a two-day crisis between the central government in Baghdad and Kurdish leaders trying to exert more control over their resources as Iraq continues to disintegrate.

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The issue of who owns the oil prevented the tanker from off-loading at the depot in Galveston, TX.

Even as it faces the very dire threat of fracturing along ethnic and religious lines, and having lost total control of its northwest to forces belong to the Islamic State, Iraq is desperate to keep a hold on its national oil supplies. The Iraqi government in Baghdad filed a lawsuit in a US court to reclaim control of the United Kalavryta cargo and block the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) from delivering it. Around this time, the tanker vanished from radar.

After a two-day absence, the signal of the ship was picked up again today by local authorities in the US.

A Coast Guard official told MailOnline today that the vessel might have turned off its beacon in the Gulf of Mexico, which makes even a very large vessel such as an oil tanker difficult to track over vast stretches of open water. Switching off transponders is a common ploy tankers transporting disputed oil from Iran or Kurdistan use to avoid detection from navies or security agencies. 

The official also said it was possible the ship had traveled outside the range of the U.S. Coast Guard antennas, which would account for it vanishing from the AIS ship-tracking system. 

Another tanker bearing Kurdish oil vanished in the eastern Mediterranean near Egypt earlier this week, only to reappear off the Israeli coast 48 hours later. 

TagsUnited Kalavryta, United Kalavrvta, Iraqi oil, Kurdish oil, Kurdish independence