(Adnkronos) – It is not a shadow fleet, according to the usual designation, that allows Russia to circumvent sanctions on oil. A significant portion of ‘regular’ cargo ships helps Moscow sell crude oil at prices above the ceiling imposed at the end of 2022 by Ukraine’s allied countries. Research by Sergey Vakulenko, an analyst at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, found that of the 2,849 oil tankers sailing the world’s seas, 735, or one in four, have loaded oil at a Russian port at least once in the first nine months of this year.
Oil traffic from countries such as Russia, Iran and Venezuela, which are subject to restrictive measures, is handled by tankers operating for them ‘part-time’ or only occasionally. There is, moreover, very little overlap between the three countries. Most of the cargos of the 735 tankers involved in the traffic are part of the globally operating fleet. “The shadow fleet is not very distinctive.” Most, if not all, Russian oil exported by sea is sold outside the price cap regime. Even though in many cases the documents accompanying the cargo report legal prices.
