The battle over Russian oil revenue continues as yet another set of sanctions comes into force at the end of the month, this time targeting the so-called Russian shadow fleet and other vessels that have been transporting Russian fossil fuels above price caps, mainly to Asia. In addition to two Russian oil companies, more than 150 tankers were added to the U.S. sanctions list, thereof 68 attributed to the dark fleet, bringing the total of shadow fleet tankers sanctioned to 35 percent out of the 669 vessels identified as such.
In anticipation of the sanctions kicking in, Russian oil shipments to India saw an uptick in the first 10 days of February while tankers are still running. CREA reports that shipments to other countries also rose. Chinese deliveries were down compared to January's daily average as the country was quick to replace Russian shipments with Angolan and Brazilian ones, Reuters reports. According to news articles, many affected tankers have already anchored and remain idle, while the approach of tanker-specific sanctions has been hailed as a success. Now that these ships that are in violation of Western sanctions by obscuring their Russian ties are named, India and China have been backing out of accepting them in their harbors.
In late 2022 and early 2023, the EU, the G7 and Norway had already agreed to only allow the transport of Russian fossil fuels on its local vessels if the cargo was subject to a price cap. Western shipping providers can also only offer their market-dominating services, including insurance services, if the price cap is met. This attempt to starve Russia of high fossil fuel revenues led to the country obscuring the ownership of tankers. The shadow fleet, a group of aging tankers with opaque ownership structures and without substantial insurance, took over the transport of Russian oil, dodging market caps.
While buying new boats continues to be a way around even vessel-specific sanctions, it is believed to be unsustainable in the long run as it is costly and global scrap vessel stockpiles have already been substantially depleated.
