The aggressor country of russia has increased the volume of transportation of its oil by sea. It transports about 70% of raw materials by tankers from the so-called shadow fleet, created to circumvent Western sanctions.
The Guardian writes about this with reference to the report of the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE).
In late 2022, the G7 countries adopted a series of measures to ban Western companies from transporting, servicing or brokering russian crude oil.
It was planned that these efforts would make it possible to hit sales of russian oil, the transportation of which was largely dependent on tankers owned by Western companies. It was assumed that these companies would be afraid of the introduction of sanctions and therefore refuse to conduct operations with oil from the russian federation.
However, russia has created a shadow fleet of tankers, buying up old and poorly maintained vessels en masse to transport oil to circumvent sanctions.
According to the KSE report, the shadow fleet continues to expand. Now it accounts for up to 70% of the oil produced in the russian federation in the sea.
Over the past year, the volume of russian oil transported by these tankers has almost doubled and reached 4.1 million barrels per day in June.
Russia began forming a shadow fleet of tankers in early 2022. Since then, Moscow has invested at least USD 10 billion in this project.
KSE also warned that russia's use of old tankers could lead to an environmental disaster, as most of the oil is transported through busy routes, including the Baltic Sea and the Strait of Gibraltar. KSE experts noted that the cost of liquidating an oil spill could reach billions of dollars.
It will be recalled that at the end of September, The Insider publication wrote with reference to a Greenpeace study that the russian shadow fleet threatens the ecology of the Baltic Sea.
As Ukrainian News Agency earlier reported, on July 19, Great Britain imposed sanctions against eleven tankers used to transport russian oil to circumvent sanctions.
We also wrote that in June, russia began working on creating a shadow fleet of tankers to transport liquefied natural gas.
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