The Kremlin’s shadow fleet not only poses a threat to the global maritime order, but also a serious environmental threat.
Environmental group Greenpeace has investigated the risks posed to the Baltic Sea by Russian dark fleets as they travel from Baltic ports to the Denmark Strait and from there to their destinations – and the consequences could be devastating.
According to a report published on September 24 by environmental groups, the number of Russian oil tankers passing Germany’s Baltic coast is now 70 percent higher than it was before the Ukraine war, and these tankers are almost twice as old and in poor repair as those that plied the route before the war.
“Can’t Greenpeace do anything?” a reporter asked me during an interview about the Shadow Fleet in late 2022. I hadn’t considered the possibility, but the question made me realize that environmental groups should indeed stand up to the Shadow Fleet.
That’s because the collection of aging ships transporting huge amounts of sanctioned Russian crude oil to recipient countries like India and China poses a serious and immediate risk to the waters they navigate. Not only are they not properly insured, they are old and poorly maintained. In fact, many of the shadowy ships were destined for scrapping until secret organizations saw a money-making opportunity and bought them. And today, exporting oil, especially above the price caps set by Western countries, is how Russia makes money to fund its military.
That means a lot of old, ill-maintained tankers loaded with Russian oil will be passing through the Baltic Sea and through the Denmark Straits on their way to their final destination. These vessels pose considerable danger to the marine environment. In April, Greenpeace activists tracked a ship conducting a dangerous ship-to-ship oil transfer off the coast of Gotland, painting it with typically Greenpeace-style slogans such as “Oil is the fuel of war” and “People want peace.”
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The environmental group has now documented the activities of the shadow fleet in the Baltic Sea. To be more precise, in a report dated September 24, its German researchers documented ships leaving Russian ports, sailing along Germany’s Baltic coast and heading towards the Denmark Strait. Last year, about 1,000 tankers loaded with Russian oil passed the German coast, a new record.
The ships are old, very old: Greenpeace reports that the average age of a ship is now 16.6 years, up from 8.9 years before the war. Two-thirds have no P&I (protection and liability) insurance to cover serious contingencies. Because the world’s P&I insurers are based in Western countries and subject to Western sanctions, shadow ships turn to alternative insurance, which often doesn’t cover them at all.
All these factors suggest that most of the tankers transporting Russian oil through German territorial waters belong to the so-called shadow fleet, which operates on the margins of global shipping.
Even more troubling, the route taken by these rusting relics includes bird sanctuaries and nature reserves, such as the Fehmarnbelt and the Kadet Trench. For example, on August 22, two of three tankers sailing off the German coast were uninsured. They were 17, 18, and 20 years old, respectively. One of them, the Chili, had been found to have multiple deficiencies during port inspections. Last July, Indian port inspectors noticed corrosion on the hull. In March, inspectors at the Indian port of Sikka found at least six deficiencies on the Chili and detained it.
Three tankers per day traveling this route means the potential for oil spills and other environmental disasters every day of the year, and these large ships can each carry tens of thousands of tons of oil. What can be done to keep this shadow flotilla out of our waters, putting us at risk of massive oil spills every day? I follow this flotilla every day and can’t think of any quick solutions that haven’t already been tried (though I do put forward some ideas in a proposal to be presented at the Atlantic Council soon).
But innovative cooperation is only the first step. Greenpeace, like the US government, will not be able to take on Shadow Fleet on its own. But Western governments and environmental groups are, or should be, fully united for once. This is a good start.
Elizabeth Blow is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering key topics in European and North American foreign policy. All opinions are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the position or views of the institutions they represent or of the Centre for European Policy Analysis.
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