"The US receives data on our tankers from satellites"

Alexey Gromov, Principal Director on Energy studies at the Institute for Energy and Finance, was interviewed by the Novye Izvestia newspaper on the issues of tracking the Russian "shadow" fleet and further prospects for global energy trade.

Is Russia's shadow fleet a secret or not?

— Every company, including Bloomberg, has the opportunity to receive information from different sources. To do this, it is not necessary to "merge", it is enough to receive information from the opposite side. There are resources outside Russia that provide this information.

This is satellite military intelligence, which has data on tankers, including those carrying Russian oil. Military intelligence covers the entire globe, there is no hiding from it. Therefore, it seems to me that it makes no sense to say that there is some kind of information leak.

— There is no other way in the international field. We are working in the global market. The shadow fleet is in the legal field, it must be registered. The vessel is not allowed to be used on maritime trade lines without appropriate certificates. This is a prerequisite, it is not an illegal vessel or illegal cargo. Therefore, certification will continue.

- Yes. We must understand that, if desired, it would be possible to block almost all tankers that sail as part of the shadow fleet precisely in terms of sanctions, but this is not being done for several reasons.

The first reason is that a complete shutdown of the shadow fleet can cause a sharp reduction in oil supply and an unstable price situation, which the United States is not interested in.

Secondly, each such procedure, when legal claims are made against an oil tanker or a shipping company, it is necessary to conduct a legal procedure, collect evidence base for each of the cases. It takes time and money, so the process is regular, smooth and slow enough, which is good for us.

— Everything is going to ensure that the segmentation of world trade will only increase and we will inevitably come to new BRICS-type trade partnerships, which will not necessarily be closed from the world, but will allow trading operations within such associations without recourse to global financial and logistics systems. The era of trade globalization is ending, and the era of its regionalization and segmentation is beginning.