NS Century jpg
(44.75 KB, 768x576)
How many ships in the shadow fleet is unknown. The numbers are 100 to 600. Kennedy himself thinks there are 250.
According to him, more than 95% of the ships of the shadow fleet are registered in seven countries. The flag of Liberia is used by 88 tankers, including 55 by Sovcomflot. The Marshall Islands are the least popular of the top 7 countries, with 23 tankers. A total of 111 ships, or 40 percent of the fleet that Moscow painstakingly and cost-effectively assembled to circumvent oil price restrictions, Kennedy said.
The traps don't end there. 34 tankers of the shadow fleet had insurance issued in the United States for liability for the oil spill, the expert estimates. Half of the oil from the Far Eastern port of Kozmino in the first quarter of 2023 was sent by ships owned by coalition countries or had insurance companies from these countries (or both), experts of the Kyiv School of Economics wrote.
This increases the number of ships facing sanctions to 145. In addition, sanctions can be extended further down the chain to sellers and buyers of Russian oil, any intermediaries, at least somehow interacted with them.
This is surprising, writes Kennedy, because the Russian Navy should have been inaccessible to sanctions. Tankers delivering oil and petroleum products to China, India and Turkey, their insurers, payment systems and any other related companies should not interact with companies from the countries of the coalition ceiling. Then they could carry fuel that was sold above the established limits.
All this increases the risks for the trade of Russian oil, which Russia will have to compensate with money – one can assume an increase in transaction costs, an increase in the discount in the price of Russian oil relative to Brent and eventually a decrease in budget revenues, Kennedy argues.
Where shall we go?
Sanctioned tankers are scattered around the world. NS Century was on its way to India when it was placed on the sanctions list. The Indian port refused to accept it. The tanker is drifting in the Laccadive Sea. Kazan and Ligovsky Prospect docked in Chinese ports, MarineTraffic shows. HS Atlantica stands in the Sea of Marmara.
The Turkish tanker was chartered by the American Exxon Mobil at the time of the sanctions. But OFAC had no claims against the company as it chartered the vessel months after shipping Russian crude. The tanker was allowed to deliver the cargo to Houston, then it retreated to the Gulf of Mexico, and now, according to MarineTraffic, is in the Mexican port of Altamira. The remaining ships go to Russia: Viktor Bakaev, SCF Primorye to the Black Sea, NS Champion to Ust-Luga.