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Russia relies on 'shadow fleets' for crude oil sales

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Facing sanctions for its Ukraine invasion, Russia's looking further afield to find customers for its crude oil, and it is having to rely on so-called "shadow fleets" to do so.

LEILA FADEL, HOST:

A European Union ban European on Russian oil is forcing the Kremlin to look elsewhere for customers. Now it's turning to a fleet of tankers willing to bust sanctions. NPR's Jackie Northam reports.

JACKIE NORTHAM, BYLINE: Before Russia invaded Ukraine, Europe was by far and away the largest customer for its oil - even bigger than Russia's domestic market.

CRAIG KENNEDY: Pipelines, ports, oil fields in West Siberia - everything has been oriented toward selling to Europe. But now it's being forced into a much smaller market, much further away.

NORTHAM: Craig Kennedy is with the Davis Center for Russian Eurasian Studies at Harvard and spent years in Moscow. He says the Kremlin has been scrambling to come up with ways to get crude to those other markets. But it would take years to build a series of pipelines to Asia and elsewhere.

KENNEDY: They realized, we are going to be stuck with seaborne exports. Eighty percent of our oil has to reach its end customers by sea, and that means tankers.

NORTHAM: But there was a problem. Russia faces a shortage of tankers willing to transport the oil. Its own fleet isn't big enough. Many Western companies have refused to carry Russian crude since the war in Ukraine. And the U.S. and its allies implemented a plan that would prevent tankers from transporting Russian oil unless it came at or below $60 a barrel for its own brand of crude. Right now, prices are below that. But that could change. So the Kremlin has been building up a network known as a shadow fleet.

ERIK BROEKHUIZEN: The shadow fleet is a group of ships. It's difficult to estimate exactly how many ships there are, but probably between two and 300.

NORTHAM: Erik Broekhuizen is with Poten & Partners, a brokerage and consulting firm specializing in energy and maritime transportation.

BROEKHUIZEN: A lot of those ships have been acquired in recent months in anticipation of this EU ban. And the sole purpose of these ships is to move Russian crude just in case it would be illegal for regular owners to do so.

NORTHAM: Most vessels in the shadow fleets are owned by offshore companies in countries with more lenient shipping rules, like Panama, Liberia and the Marshall Islands, says Basil Karatzas, CEO of New York-based Karatzas Marine Advisors, a shipping finance advisory firm. He says the owners have limited exposure to U.S. or EU governments or banks, and so their fear of sanctions is limited, and enforcement is difficult. Karatzas says the risk-reward ratio is favorable to the owners of the shadow fleet tankers.

BASIL KARATZAS: If you can make 10, $20 per barrel spread and the vessel holds a million barrels of oil, you can make, like, five, $10 million profit per voyage. If you do it five times a year, you can see the economics of that.

NORTHAM: Karatzas says shadow fleets have long been used by Iran and Venezuela to evade sanctions. He says shadow fleet tankers tend to be old and junky. But since the start of the Ukraine war, they've become highly valuable because of the cargo.

KARATZAS: In February 2022, a 20-year-old vessel was more or less valued at close to scrap. Now these vessels are worth 40 million apiece. So at the very least, Putin gave to the shipowners a very nice present.

NORTHAM: Putin will need plenty more shadow fleet tankers if the price of Russian oil rises past $60 a barrel and legitimate ships are then banned from carrying the crude. But with such a highly lucrative business and a small chance of getting caught, more tankers could be lured into joining the shadow fleet.

Jackie Northam, NPR News.