Bloomberg: Russian tanker used for shipping for first time since being hit by sanctions, it unloaded oil at sea near Singapore

The Russian tanker Primorye, which is under sanctions, disappeared from radar in the sea off Singapore in early June in order to transfer oil to another vessel, the Bloomberg news agency found out .

Primorye was hit by US sanctions in October 2023 for transporting raw materials at a price higher than the Western sanctions. The vessel was previously owned by Sovcomflot, but by that time the owner had changed to the UAE company Lumber Marine SA . A total of 40 tankers were hit by similar sanctions.

Since then, the Primorye, with a capacity of about a million barrels, has not been loaded for about six months, like other sanctioned tankers. However, at the end of April, as Bloomberg discovered, the ship arrived at the port of Novorossiysk for a batch of Urals oil.

By June 3, the Primorye had made its way to the Singapore Strait. About 100 kilometers east of the Singapore coast, the crew turned off their radio transmitters. Satellite footage from those days showed the tanker transferring oil to another vessel, the Ocean Hermana , whose operator is unknown.

The tanker Ocean Hermana , according to its history of movements, often delivered cargo to China. Bloomberg suggests that the oil from Novorossiysk is also destined for a buyer in China. The Primorye itself (empty, according to its draft) headed for a port in southern China. Ocean Hermana last transmitted its location on June 10 and was still in the same place in the strait.

A month after Primorye, at the end of May, another tanker that fell under sanctions, Bratsk, was refueled in the port of Novorossiysk. Before the sanctions, the Chinese-made vessel belonged to Sovcomflot under a different name , NS Burgas . It is currently in the Indian Sea, and is expected to arrive in the Singapore Strait on June 17.

A similar method, where traders transfer oil directly into the sea, has been used since 2022 after the introduction of EU sanctions on Russian oil supplies. One of the first such cases was recorded in June 2022 in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Portugal.

Atlantic Council experts warned of the danger of a spill at sea because of the method itself, and because the shadow shipping uses older vessels (their average age is about 30 years). They also doubted the ability of Russian firms, which began insuring oil supplies after Western companies stopped working, to fulfill their obligations in the event of a spill.