A vast shadow fleet of tankers with unknown owners is being amassed to service Moscow’s interests, Bloomberg reports.
This is happening in the run-up to Dec. 5, when the EU is due to ban Russian crude imports and halt the provision of shipping, financing and insurance cover to related trades,
“If you look at how many ships have been sold over the past six months to undisclosed buyers, it’s very clear that a fleet is being built up in order to transport this,” said Christian Ingerslev, chief executive officer of Maersk Tankers A/S in Copenhagen.
Anoop Singh, head of tanker research at Braemar, also said that there had been a spike of tanker trading in the runup to 5 December.
According to shipbroker Braemar, 240 more vessels - 102 Aframaxes, 58 Suezmaxes and 80 very large oil tankers - have been purchased to support Russia's transportation of four million barrels per day to the Far East. Last year they carried Iranian and Venezuelan oil.
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