Myanmar Fuel Contracts Listed Diesel But Shipments Carried Jet Fuel

For residents of Myanmar, the cost of flight and the frequency of air strikes have long been tied to the military's ability to secure fuel. A new review of trade documents and shipping records shows that officials altered paperwork to hide the origin and type of a major fuel delivery. This administrative step allowed a sanctioned tanker to offload jet fuel in December 2025 while the official contract described the cargo as diesel.

The vessel involved was the Reef, a ship under US sanctions. It arrived in Myanmar waters carrying approximately 113,000 barrels of fuel from the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas. The import was arranged by Dynamic Wave, a local energy broker, which had signed a $15.8 million deal with Thailand's Tawan-Oil Trading. On paper, the deal was for South African diesel. However, United Nations and Vortexa data show no record of such trade between South Africa and Myanmar in 2025, while satellite imagery tracked the Reef from Iran to Southeast Asia.

Local authorities facilitated the discrepancy. On November 30, 2025, Myanmar's foreign exchange regulator sent a letter to the client of Dynamic Wave, National Energy Prime Aviation Services Company. The letter instructed that import papers would describe the delivery as diesel instead of jet fuel. It also authorized payment to Tawan. National Energy Prime is part-owned by the military-backed government. The regulator did not provide a reason for changing the fuel description in the official records.

The activist group Justice for Myanmar obtained these documents from a government server that was briefly accessible to the public. The group stated that the files were hosted on a junta-run server. A dead link to one of the files appeared in search engine results, supporting the claim. The delivery dates and quantities in the leaked documents match separate Iranian shipment records reviewed by journalists.

This was not the first instance of such a transaction. In May 2025, Dynamic Wave agreed to buy 202,000 barrels of supposed South African diesel from Tawan for $26 million. Expert analysis indicated the fuel density matched jet fuel, not diesel, and the price was more than 50 percent above global benchmarks. The tanker Noble delivered just under 200,000 barrels to Yangon on June 17, 2025. Shipping data showed it had been loaded at Bandar Abbas.

The use of mislabeled documents reflects the pressure of US sanctions imposed in 2023 on Myanmar's jet-fuel industry. Washington targeted the sector due to the military's bombing of civilian targets during the civil war that began after the 2021 coup. Buying Iranian fuel also triggers broad American sanctions. The payment for the December shipment was directed to an account at Siam Commercial Bank in Thailand. A 2024 United Nations report named the bank as a major facilitator of military procurement, though the bank has said its transactions were legitimate.

The military has controlled Myanmar since seizing power from Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021. The United Nations reported in August 2026 that air attacks have killed thousands, many of them civilians. The foreign ministry stated that the military exercises maximum restraint to avoid civilian harm. Recent reports indicate that Iran remained the primary supplier of jet fuel to the military through late 2025 and into the current year.