The UK government will impose sanctions on as many as 100 tankers that it says are used to ship Russian crude oil abroad. Bloomberg reports that this constitutes a 75% increase in the number of sanctioned so-called shadow fleet vessels.
This, Downing Street said, will make the UK the country that has sanctioned the most tankers carrying Russian oil. Initially, it targeted 133 vessels with sanctions, the Bloomberg report also noted. The UK has already sanctioned 41 vessels used to transport Russian oil abroad. Of these, however, 39 have continued to ship Russian crude.
Tankers used to carry Russian oil abroad have been a big sanction targets for the EU and the UK. One way tankers were used to enforce punishment on Russia for its invasion of the Ukraine was the G7 price cap mechanism that was linked to Western tanker insurance coverage. Russia, however, worked around this by using tankers insured in Russia itself and other countries not part of the G7 such as India and the UAE.
Sanctioning the vessels directly has been another approach, with some even going further—much further—and seizing a vessel. This is what Germany did two months ago, when it seized an oil tanker of the Russian shadow fleet that was found adrift in the Baltic Sea in January.
The tanker, Eventin, was traveling under the flag of Panama when German authorities said in January that the vessel, belonging to the Russian shadow fleet, was stuck in German waters in the Baltic Sea. The tanker was carrying oil worth some $43 million, which has now become property of the German state.
The Eventin was featured on a list of sanctioned vessels produced by the European Union, which while not a single country, leads the UK in terms of sanctioned tankers, with 153 in total.
By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com
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