Getting more expensive and changing flags: how new sanctions are transforming the "shadow fleet"

Alexey Gromov, Principal Director on Energy studies at the Institute for Energy and Finance, commented to the Neft and Capital Internet portal on the consequences of the US sanctions tightening on the shipping of Russian oil and ways to overcome them.

As Alexey Gromov said, "changing flags" is not such a big problem compared to other difficulties caused by sanctions. Of course, Russia will need to re-register a number of courts, which will cost some money and time, but this is all completely solvable.

"It is not difficult to provide a new jurisdiction for the ships. Even the financial costs of this process are one-time. And given the increasingly close relations of Russia with African countries, it is quite expected that ships carrying Russian oil under the flags of countries from the Black continent will soon appear," the expert believes.

Alexey Gromov stressed that we can already see how, just a week after the January sanctions were imposed, only 5% of the total volume of black gold shipments from Russia turned out to be on ships transporting oil from Russia and included in the sanctions lists.