Condensate is pretty volatile stuff. Much more so than typical “crude”. I would NOT want to be on that ship...
And, the tanker was headed to S. Korea. That’s not to say it’s impossible the Iranians might have tried to slip a little condensate to N. Korea, but, I would have to guess the S. Korean customer would be a wee bit upset, and the S. Korean gov’t would be in excellent position to seize the ship (as they have in a couple instances.) Well, less the ramming, anyway...
I had to do some research on “ultra-light condensate” to figure out what we are talking about here since the author is too lazy to explain what it means. Apparently, it’s basically a liquid byproduct of natural gas extraction that is used as precursor material in gasoline or ethanol production, or in solvents and similar materials. I guess it could be used in plastics and other chemistry as well. I wish they just said “a light form of a natural gasoline derived from natural gas wells known as ultra-light condensate” in the first place.
If the Iranians were “trying to slip a little condensate to No. Korea”, (a good possibility), one way would be to overload the ship but put fake tonnage figures on the shipping manifest.
Therefore anything offloaded to a N. Korean tanker or even at a small port, would not show up on any tonnage figures when the condensate would be delivered to So. Korea.
This has been done before with other items, so why not oil?