Western shipping and insurance companies are massively returning to transporting russian oil after several months of a "hole" in the tanker market, which formed after the latest sanctions of the administration of former US President Joseph Biden.
Bloomberg reported this on Friday, May 30.
An analysis of data on owners and ship tracking, carried out by Bloomberg journalists, shows that in the spring, about a third of all cargoes of russian Urals oil were transported by tankers owned by Western companies.
The agency emphasizes that this is the highest figure since the fall of 2023, when the US Treasury Department imposed the first sanctions against tankers transporting russian oil.
Bloomberg writes that not only shipping companies have stepped up their activities, but also insurers. These are companies that are allowed to insure tankers transporting oil sold at a price below USD 60 per barrel. Their share is also about a third, as they usually insure ships owned by companies located in Western countries.
A special role was played by the sharp drop in oil prices in April this year. Then Brent crude fell from USD 75 to USD 60 per barrel. The price of russian Urals oil at the time of the drop fell below USD 50 per barrel. During this period, the share of Western tankers transporting russian oil was 35%.
According to experts, the key factor was that oil buyers did not want to deal with tankers that were under Western sanctions.
As the Ukrainian News agency earlier reported, today, May 30, Razom We Stand communications specialist Maksym Gardus wrote that Panama has tightened control over the transfer of oil between tankers, which is a painful blow to russia's "shadow fleet".
As a reminder, on May 12, the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine stated that russia was using Indonesia to export oil to circumvent Western sanctions.
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