Sanctions Have Not Slowed the Growth of the Shadow Fleet

 

The shadow fleet of sanctions-busting tankers has grown to more than 1,100 vessels and has been adding about one ship a day for the last six months, according to brokers BRS. Fully 18 percent of the world's tanker tonnage now operates in the dark, BRS calculates, including about 300 Suezmaxes and VLCCs.

Four out of five of these ships are sanctioned by one or more nations, but the restrictions have not stopped the fleet's operations, nor the secondhand sales that fuel its expansion. Sanctions mean that the majority of these ships have questionable insurance cover, as they cannot access legitimate insurers in the West. With Panama ramping up efforts to de-flag shadow fleet tonnage, hundreds of these ships have moved over to gray- or black-list flags  - like Gabon, whose overseas maritime registration agent is now sanctioned. With few port calls outside of their trading route, these vessels face little regulatory pressure to ensure quality. 

The flag state oversight and insurance shortcomings are particularly concerning due to the composition of the fleet, which has been assembled by overpaying for aging tonnage. The average age of the shadow fleet is now about 20 years, and sanctioned vessels are harder to sell for scrap, reducing the incentive to upgrade. An end-of-life cash buyer recently filed suit against the owner of the shadow fleet tanker Conico Atlas for allegedly failing to disclose that it was sanctioned, and a court in Gujarat has ordered the ship's arrest as collateral. (Due diligence checks may be performed against public sanctions lists, including https://tankertrackers.com/report/sanctioned.)

Sanctioned tankers continue to operate with impunity, as evidenced by the high-volume STS activity at anchorages off Malaysia and Singapore. Just outside of the Malaysian EEZ, on the approaches to the Singapore Strait, an aggregation of shadow fleet tankers stays busy conducting nonstop transfers of Iranian and Russian oil bound for China. Sanctioned vessels offload to non-sanctioned vessels, which then ferry the crude to the destination port to maintain plausible deniability. Of 239 tankers that stopped in the area over the last month, 108 were sanctioned, according to an analysis by Windward. 

Though sanctions have a mixed history of effectiveness so far, kinetic methods have succeeded in taking some Russia-serving tankers offline. Seven tank vessels with a history of Russian port calls have suffered explosions since last winter, likely caused by the covert placement of limpet mines. AIS tracking provided by Pole Star reveals that five of these ships are still idling at anchor or have gone AIS-dark. Only two have returned to visible trading post-attack. 

To combat this threat, Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered security services to ramp up pre-clearance checks - including dive inspections - before allowing foreign ships into Russian ports. Many analysts suspect Ukrainian involvement, but Kyiv has not claimed responsibility.