By AFP -Agence France Presse
Russia's “shadow fleet” brings a “high risk” of oil spills
Helsinki (AFP) - As the aging and disabled tankers of Russia's “shadow fleet” ply the shallow waters of the Baltic Sea, a major oil spill disaster is looming, experts told AFP.
Security analysts claim that Russia is operating a large “shadow fleet” of hundreds of vessels, seeking to dodge the sanctions that Western nations have imposed on its oil exports due to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Often rusty and obsolete, they operate in the Baltic Sea without Western protection and indemnity (P&I) insurance and with crews with no experience navigating winter conditions.
This sets off alarm bells in the Baltic Sea, which is shallow and difficult to navigate and whose only access to the Atlantic Ocean is through a strait between Sweden and Denmark.
“The risk of an oil spill accident has existed for many years in the Baltic Sea, but the Russian shadow fleet has increased the risk significantly,” said Mikko Hirvi, head of maritime safety at the Finnish Border Guard, which is tasked with responding to environmental threats in the Baltic Sea.
For more than two years, the Finnish Border Guard has been closely monitoring the “shadow fleet” in the Gulf of Finland - the easternmost bay of the heavily trafficked Baltic Sea - which borders Estonia to the south and Russia to the east.
Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Germany, Sweden, and Denmark also border the sea.
The Finnish authority defines the “shadow fleet” as old and technically deficient tankers that were not spotted in the Baltic Sea before Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
Since then, the number of these vessels has skyrocketed.
“We estimate that 70 to 80 loaded tankers leave Russian ports every week carrying oil through the Gulf of Finland. Of these, around 30 to 40 vessels belong to the clandestine fleet,” said Hirvi.
Around 430 vessels have been identified as making up the clandestine fleet globally, according to a report by the Kyiv School of Economics.
“A large proportion of them sail through the Danish straits because Russia relies heavily on its Baltic ports for exports, especially of crude oil,” said Yevgeniy Golovchenko, a political scientist at the University of Copenhagen.
Western authorities have also accused the ships of sabotaging submarine communications and power cables in several high-profile incidents.
Accident waiting to happen.
Hirvi said that tankers are increasingly hiding their location data by jamming GPS and disabling AIS, a global tracking system that ships use to provide identification and positioning information to other ships and border stations to avoid collisions.
“They turn the system off to hide their visits to Russia and circumvent sanctions,” he said.
“The risk of an accident is high.”
The ownership of the vessels is opaque. They usually sail under the flag of countries such as Gabon, Liberia, and the Cook Islands.
Some carry more than 100,000 tons of oil - meaning that a collision or running aground could result in a massive spill, with fatal consequences for the marine environment and its fragile ecosystems, the Swedish Coast Guard told AFP.
“These are large tankers carrying a lot of fuel, which means that the oil will always reach land... and could reach the coasts of many countries,” said Mattias Lindholm of the Swedish Coast Guard.
In the event of an accident in Denmark, “the most likely scenario is that Danish taxpayers will have to pay” for the clean-up since the ships are not adequately insured, said Golovchenko.
Looking for solutions
To reduce environmental and safety risks, Denmark's maritime authority said this month that it would tighten controls on oil tankers in its waters, while the Finnish Border Guard has increased cooperation between the authorities.
As international waters, the Danish straits are subject to the right of free passage, and any measures that could effectively prevent oil tankers from crossing the Baltic Sea require a balance between international law and political will, Golovchenko said.
Kristina Siig, a professor of maritime law at the University of Southern Denmark, told AFP that it would be “technically feasible” to prevent “entry and exit from the Baltic Sea just by blocking what is three kilometers (less than two miles) of a bridge,” but illegal under international law.
The European Union has blacklisted 79 vessels. Further measures targeting the clandestine fleet are to be included in its next round of sanctions.
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