Shadow fleet tankers shipping dirty fuel in a setback for clean-up efforts

Shadow fleet tankers evade sanctions and environmental regulations, posing challenges for the global shipping industry.

The growing shadow fleet of tankers transporting sanctioned Iranian, Venezuelan and Russian oil is filling up with the cheapest fuel available, hindering industry efforts to use cleaner fuel to cut shipping emissions, according to shipping data and sources.

The global shipping industry is under increasing pressure to use cleaner fuel to reduce both carbon and sulphur dioxide emissions and other pollutants and meet broader green targets.

Hundreds of tankers that are transporting sanctioned oil are posing a challenge since they are hard to track because of their opaque ownership and use of non-Western insurance and other marine services, and they have little incentive to follow cleaner shipping standards.

"You're seeing greater numbers of ships that have found ways to circumvent sanctions by operating outside Western jurisdiction," said Michelle Wiese Bockmann, principal analyst with maritime data group Lloyd's List Intelligence.

"The dark fleet has gone on steroids. And the deceptive shipping practices that they're engaging in are getting more and more complex and sophisticated."

Those include dangerous ship-to-ship transfers of oil in international waters to avoid port state control scrutiny, falsifying ship identification numbers, tankers sending false information about their position, and the use of flag registries with lower standards of technical oversight and expertise, Bockmann said.

Lloyd's List Intelligence estimates the shadow fleet had grown to around 630 tankers from 530 a year ago, to make up 14.5% of the overall global tanker fleet.