Russia wants to circumvent oil boycott with ‘shadow fleet’: “Risk of accident with oil tanker greater than ever” | War Ukraine and Russia

Shipbroker Braemar estimates that Moscow – which relies heavily on foreign tankers to transport its crude oil – has purchased more than 100 ships this year, the Financial Times reports. Vessels that normally serve Iran and Venezuela, two countries also subject to Western oil embargoes, are also being relocated.

The Kremlin is seeking to assemble a so-called “shadow fleet” in an effort to evade new international restrictions on oil exports. After all, the price ceiling for Russian oil set by the European Union, Australia and the G7 countries came into force on Monday. The aim of the measure is to reduce Russia’s revenues, while giving Moscow the opportunity to supply the world market.

The measure means that only oil that is sold at a price of $60 a barrel or less can be delivered. In addition, there is also an embargo from the EU, US and Canada on deliveries of Russian oil at sea.

LOOK. “Russian oil price cap has three objectives”

Maritime intelligence services, meanwhile, are seeing an increase in tankers disabling trackers to evade sanctions. The number of oil tankers linked to Russia that go completely “black” to avoid being tracked in the South Atlantic has doubled in recent months, The Guardian reports.

By disabling their tracking systems on the high seas, the ships can transfer oil unnoticed to other tankers, making it appear that their oil does not come from Russia. Tankers that can hide any ties to Russia through illegal shipments mid-ocean hope to sell their oil at normal prices.

According to an energy expert, the oil price cap imposed by the EU on Russia increases the risk of an environmental disaster at sea. “The risk of a tanker accident is greater than it has been in a long time,” the head of the Russia Institute at King’s College London, Adnan Vatansever, told Der Spiegel. According to Vatansever, ships of the shadow fleet are “quite old”. He does not know “in what condition, for example, the ships from Iran and Venezuela are – states whose economies have been suffering for years from Western sanctions”.

Vatansever doubts that Moscow can do without Western ships. “The shadow fleet is not big enough,” he says. According to insiders, the Russian oil industry would need about 240 tankers to export crude oil and products such as gasoline and diesel.

After all, Russia is the second largest exporter of crude oil in the world. Traders say the shadow fleet will lessen, but not eliminate, the effect of such sanctions. Without the ceiling, it would be easy for Moscow to find new buyers at market prices.

Earlier, Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister in charge of Energy, Alexander Novak, had already warned that Moscow would no longer supply oil to countries that would comply with the price cap. He predicted that companies would find “mechanisms to sell the affected products among themselves”.