Dozens of tankers stuck around the world due to sanctions for trading Russian oil

Dozens of oil tankers are idle after being included in the US Treasury Department's sanctions list for trading Russian oil, Bloomberg reports , citing data from ship tracking services.

According to the agency, since October last year the United States has imposed sanctions on 40 tankers involved in the trade of Russian oil. Most of them were subject to restrictions due to violation of the price cap that Western countries have developed to limit revenues from oil sales to Russian companies and the budget.

Twenty-one of the ships on the list belong to the Russian state shipping company Sovcomflot. The remaining 19 belong to Hennesea Holdings Ltd, registered in the United Arab Emirates.

Of all the sanctioned Sovcomflot ships, only one is currently in motion: the SKF Primorye. According to the agency, it is currently en route to Asia. If it can unload at its destination without problems, this could prompt Russia to use more sanctioned ships, Bloomberg writes. But for now, the rest of the sanctioned ships are idle, scattered around the world.

Eight Sovcomflot tankers are in the Russian ports of Vladivostok and Nakhodka on the Pacific Ocean. Some of them have been empty for five months. Another three are idle in the Baltic Sea. Another cluster of Sovcomflot tankers is in the Black Sea. Apparently, they switched off their transponders so that they cannot be tracked, the agency notes. But to leave the Black Sea, they will have to send signals at the entrance to the Bosphorus, and then they will be immediately detected.

Hennesea's 18 tankers, sanctioned in January this year, are also idle. Ten of the vessels are off the coast of China and South Korea, and most of the rest are in Port Said, Egypt.

The only sanctioned Hennesea tanker that appears to be operational is the LR2 Apus. It entered the Suez Canal in mid-April and then spent several days moving at less than one knot near Iran’s Soroush oil field before heading to the UAE.

All this shows that the US is still capable of disrupting the Russian oil supply chain if it wants to, Bloomberg sums up.

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