Russia’s ghost fleet

Something does not fit. The useful life of a superpetrolero is usually about 20 years old. After that time, the fatigue of the helmet and maintenance costs make their most logical destiny a scrapping. The largest place in the world for this work is Alang Beach, in India. However, since 2022, the number of oil tankers sent to the scrapping is in historical minimums.

Where are those ships. They have not evaporated. According to a Bloomberg reportThey continue to sail, many of them beyond their “expiration date”, turned into zombies of the seas. The question is why. And the answer, as in so many other recent geopolitical issues, is found in the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the creation of A gigantic ghost float to move the sanctioned oil of Russia.

The Russian ghost fleet. After the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Western powers, with the G7 at the head, They imposed a cap of $ 60 per barrel to Russian oil transported by sea. The idea was simple: drowning the income with which the Kremlin financed the war without causing a collapse of the energy market. To work, western shipping companies and insurers (who dominate the market) could not serve cargoes that exceed that price.

Moscow’s response was a pentadimensional chess play: to build from scratch a FLOOT Ghost Buying hundreds of old oil tankers, on the verge of retirement, through a network of owners impossible to track. According to analysts, this parallel army already has between 600 and 1,400 ships, a naval force dedicated to transporting Russian oil throughout the world, skipping the sanctions.

How an oil tanker hides. With the same tricks that were already using other sanctioned states, such as Iran or Venezuela. Turning off the AIS system transpondor, which emits its identity and position. And transferring oil from one ship to another to bleach it, as exposed This satellite image.

But also registering it in countries with lax regulations or little supervision capacity, such as Gabon, Liberia or the Marshall Islands and hiring unknown insurers or even operating the ship without reliable insurance. This is how Russia has managed to maintain its exports of crude at very high levels, mainly towards China and India .

The problem of the scrapping. Faced with this situation, in Alang, the huge scarter shipyards entered into recession. The ships that should arrive to be converted into scrap metal have remained activeserving the cause of Kremlin.

Now, the situation is beginning to change, but in a way that generates a new geopolitical problem. The oldest and most unsustainable ships of the ghost fleet They are also starting to arrive at Alang For dismantling. For local workers, it is an economic relief. For geopolitics, a mines field.

On the one hand, withdrawing these ships is a victory for maritime security and the environment. On the other, it is rewarding the sanctioned entities. For Alang’s unscathers, the incentive is purely economic: they can buy an oil tanker sanctioned with a discount of up to 40% on its market value as scrap.

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