It was bound to happen, and now the inevitable has come to pass: a Russian shadow vessel has collided with a legally operating tanker, causing both to catch fire. Equally unsurprisingly, the shadow tanker then fled the scene.
The accident occurred in Malaysian waters, but with large amounts of Russian shadow-vessel traffic in the Baltic Sea, it’s only a matter of time before we see such accidents there too.
For centuries, pirates have been the scourge of the high seas. Today, though, they’ve been surpassed by Russia’s dangerous shadow fleet, an armada of aging vessels that crisscross the oceans carrying oil and other dangerous cargo despite operating outside the official shipping sector and lacking proper insurance.
And the risks caused by dark vessels don’t end there. Because they try to hide their movements by turning off or manipulating their automatic identification systems (AIS), the dark ships increase the risk of collisions. Though shadow vessels have existed for years, primarily transporting Iranian and Venezuelan oil, their number has skyrocketed since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The growing armada constantly traverses the world’s oceans, transporting primarily Russian oil to recipients like China, India, and Turkey that are willing to buy it. In March alone, 223 loaded tankers left Russian ports; of these, 85 percent were at least 15 years old, a report from the Kyiv School of Economics finds.
Estimates of the fleet’s total size range from around 1,000 to more than 2,000. Because most respectable countries won’t tolerate the vessels in their ship registries, the dark fleet sails under flags of convenience, increasingly using countries like Eswatini (Swaziland) and Gabon that possess virtually no maritime expertise. Each one of these countries is complicit in what comes next.
With so many ghost vessels on the maritime highways, collisions are inevitable. A couple of smaller accidents have already occurred, and then on July 19, the world got a glimpse of what’s to come. Shortly after 6 am that morning, Malaysian authorities were alerted to a fire onboard the Singaporean-flagged tanker Hafnia Nile off the Malaysian coast.
Making matters worse, the São Tomé and Príncipe-flagged tanker Ceres I, a dark vessel previously linked to illicit Iranian shipments, sailing close to the Hafnia Nile, was on fire too, and as was later established, had spilled oil into the water. Because Ceres I is a dark vessel, it lacks insurance that could pay for the damage caused by the collision. At the very least, cleaning up the oil spill will cost money, which the Malaysian taxpayer will now have to find.
Who caused the collision? Rather than staying behind to help the Malaysian authorities establish the facts, the Ceres I absconded. “We believe the captain switched off its AIS and fled the scene,” Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency (MMEA) Maritime First Admiral Zin Azman Mad Yunus told a news conference on July 20. Considering that she was damaged in the collision, that meant likely further oil spills.
And because she’d turned off her AIS, other ships risked colliding with her because they had no way of knowing she was nearby until it was too late. Happily, a day later, the Malaysian authorities found and apprehended the shadow tanker.
That means Ceres I will, at least for the time being, not be able to cause further damage. But every country whose waters shadow vessels traverse – including those adjoining the Baltic Sea – faces the same troubling reality as the Malaysians, and the expense that goes with it. Because Russia’s shadow vessels often sail from the country’s Baltic Sea ports, both Sweden and Denmark, whose waters they have to traverse to reach the North Sea and then the Atlantic, are particularly at risk.
But despite being acutely aware of the risk caused by the shadow vessels, Sweden, Denmark, Malaysia, and other at-risk countries can’t block the fleet, because, under international maritime rules, all vessels have the right to sail through all waters. Sweden, Denmark, and a few other countries have tried to call out the shadow fleet, but since Russia can no longer be shamed, this has no effect. Denmark has even announced it was planning measures, but it hasn’t specified them.
Britain’s new Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, organized a statement calling for greater action, signed by more than 40 European states at the Blenheim summit on July 19 but any effect is likely to be marginal since it lacks teeth. It aims to pressure countries enabling the shadow fleet, including the states flagging the ships, into better behavior. It’s also the countries at whose ports the vessels call: the buyers of Russian oil transported on shadow vessels. But the flag states, many of whom almost entirely lack maritime expertise and for whom the flagging is merely a source of income, are unlikely to be shamed.
And the port states? The countries that buy Russian oil above the price cap, thus undermining the West’s sanctions, won’t be swayed by a call to ethical behavior. Sometimes trying to rein in the shadow fleet feels hopeless. There are simply too many countries and outfits with a vested interest in its continued operations.
Accidents like the Ceres I’s collision with the Hafnia Nile, though, are bound to trigger some thinking in the port states. When similar accidents begin occurring in their waters, they’ll be on the hook. And in the ensuing outrage, the West’s traditional but so far ineffective diplomatic approach is bound to come under the spotlight.
Elisabeth Braw is a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council and the author of the award-winning ‘Goodbye Globalization.’
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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