1. Short title This Act may be cited as the Stopping Illicit Oil Shipments Act of 2023 . 2. Findings The Congress finds the following: (1) When countries are designated under economic and trade sanctions by the United States and its allies, they are largely excluded from the licit global financial system, including the movement, sale, and profit derived from their oil and gas resources. (2) For U.S. persons, American maritime sanctions, including on nations like Iran, Russia, and North Korea, restrict the financing of vessels and cargo, insurance and re-insurance, companies using vessels to transport their goods, shipowners, charterers, and those providing maritime services such as classification and certification. (3) One method by which Iran and Russia frequently attempt to evade these U.S. sanctions on oil is to false flag , which means to avoid sanctions scrutiny by registering a vessel in a permissive country or by sailing under another country’s flag without communicating this to the country whose flag is being used. (4) According to Foreign Policy, approximately two million barrels of oil from sanctioned countries, including Iran and Russia, are transported under false flags every day. (5) In order to evade a sanctions regime, vessels transporting oil and gas resources from sanctioned countries must carry insurance policies to allow them to dock at a port, unload their goods, or use a port’s services, such as refueling. (6) The veracity of a vessel’s flag is subject to examination by port authorities, but verification by the port and service providers does not always occur. (7) Given the lack of comprehensive checks on the veracity of flags, this Act will force a change in behavior within the maritime shipping industry by limiting the availability of insurance products to those not verifying flag registration and providing a direct route for the Office of Foreign Assets Control ( OFAC ) to gain possibly actionable information that could lead to OFAC enforcement actions as well as additional targets for