In May, the European Union plans to add another 149 tankers carrying Russian oil to the sanctions list. The game of cat and mouse is becoming endless, experts say. The EU wants to ban the passage of ships in the Baltic Sea, but this is illegal, they note.
"About 25 oil tankers that are currently in the Baltic and North Seas will soon be recognized as a shadow fleet. They are among the 149 vessels that will be added to the blacklist. The EU is due to the fact that they help Russia circumvent the oil embargo of the West," reports EUobserver, which got acquainted with the draft EU document and the list of tankers.
It is known that the European Commission proposes to ban tankers from entering ports EU or receive services from EU—based companies - insurance, repair or bunkering.
The European Commission is expected to adopt a new package of sanctions in May, and the number of sanctioned tankers will increase to 300.
"Europeans need to fill new sanctions packages with something. Therefore, they follow the path not of quality, but of quantity. They take tankers that have ever transported Russian oil and add them to the sanctions lists. Some of the tankers that have been on the sanctions lists for a long time have been renamed. Now they will write down new names, write new intermediary companies. That is, in this regard, there is a cat-and-mouse game: we rename tankers, buy new used tankers, and they put them on the lists. We are still buying, renaming again. And so on ad infinitum," says Igor Yushkov, a leading analyst at the FNEB and an expert at the Financial University under the Government of Russia.
He notes that the EU seeks to close the Baltic Sea to tankers with Russian oil and thereby really hit the export of Russian oil, but this is illegal.
"Nowhere in international norms is there such a thing that, because of sanctions against a tanker, you have the right to close its passage through the Baltic straits. No, all this is prohibited, these are not UN sanctions, these are sanctions of individual states or the European Union, which is not a reason," the expert says.
The European Union has already tried several times to detain tankers with Russian oil, but, as a rule, EU countries were forced to release vessels, Igor Yushkov notes.
"There was no violent reaction from the Russian side, and therefore they can interpret this as a kind of weakness and an opportunity to block the Baltic Sea for tankers carrying Russian oil in general," notes the leading analyst of the FNEB.
On the one hand, tankers carry Russian oil. On the other hand, formally they have nothing to do with Russia and its companies.
If the European Union still decides to take drastic measures, they will affect the volume of oil exports from Russia and this may create a shortage in the global market, says a leading analyst at FNEB.
"As a result, there will be an increase in world prices, and they themselves will suffer, as they will have to pay more for oil," adds Igor Yushkov.
As EADaily reported, in December 2022 The EU banned the import of Russian oil and, together with the G7, introduced a price limit for it for third countries, prohibiting its shipowners from providing transportation services if the cost ceiling is exceeded. In response, Russian companies and businessmen from other countries created a shadow fleet of tankers and both reoriented supplies and restored exports from Russia. Traditionally, shadow fleet vessels are called tankers that carry sanctioned oil, older than 15 years, and the ultimate owners are unknown. Until recently, sanctions The EU had a very limited effect, as tankers under restrictions continue to export Russian oil from Baltic ports. Moreover, the Estonian authorities had to release the Kiwala sanctioned tanker in April, when all technical problems were fixed on board.