THIS week saw the UK’s new prime minister, Keir Starmer, lead the latest European push to banish the shadow fleet from European waters, warning of the security risk these sanction dodgers pose.

A few hours later, two tankers were on fire off Singapore. One of them seems to have been so deeply engaged in hauling sanctioned crude via deceptive operations with unknown insurance arrangements that it may as well have been a poster ship for the dark fleet*.

The details of what caused the casualty are not yet known. They will only become clear after the proper authorities have fully investigated.

But the fact that Ceres I (IMO: 9229439) has a recent history of engaging in suspected Automatic Identification System tracker spoofing, had been recently associated with a false flagging problem and has been used for facilitating Iranian trade, engaging in storage and ship-to-ship transfers, all add to the growing concern over the risks posed by dark fleet operations.

The question is, what should be done about it? Crossing fingers and hoping is not widely recognised as a reliable safety policy, and yet that is where we find ourselves in 2024.

After 30 years of hard-won improvements to tanker safety, there is now a danger of going into reverse.

Backfiring policy 

It was never the intention of economic sanctions to undermine shipping safety, but that has been the result. Shipping safety is regressing and the inevitable deadly results are starting to materialise.

The dark fleet is dangerous and getting more so with every policy push that further swells the ranks of rusting tankers determined to evade the grasp of Western restrictions.

Insurance giant Allianz pointed out in May that dark fleet tankers have been linked to more than 50 accidents already. But the experts behind those numbers have long been of the opinion that this was only the beginning.

When the unladen Pablo (IMO: 9133587) exploded off Malaysia in the past year, killing three crew with no trace of insurance, the consensus view of this lethal episode was that it represented a lucky escape for a sector increasingly living on borrowed time and at risk of a much more deadly and environmentally destructive accident to come.

More deadly, more environmentally catastrophic incidents are an inevitable consequence of moving more than 10% of the global tanker fleet outside of the rigours of mainstream classification, insurance and basic safety standards.

This dark fleet is made up of old, poorly maintained ships that typically engage in risky, deceptive shipping practices. The companies behind them obfuscate their ownership and hide their operations.

When scrutiny comes knocking, they evaporate into the shadows, only to reappear in other forms, sporting another flag, another obscure class operation, with another claim to an unknown insurance protector, if there is one at all.

The unintended consequences of sanctions are well understood by politicians, but right now the priority is to double down on existing measures and squeeze harder.

Starmer may be determined halt the trail of dirty money leaking from these ships. To date, though, no politician has offered up a plan to stop the more likely outcome of clapped out ships leaking noxious cargoes onto European coastlines.

And while the rhetoric regarding sanction efficiency may suggest otherwise, the sum total of the unprecedented deluge of economic sanctions meted out so far against these ships has largely served to move trade into the shadows rather than stop it.

There are no magic policies on offer. And even if you could somehow wave a magic wand and end the growth of the dark fleet, there are serious concerns that this particular genie is not going back in the proverbial bottle any time soon.

If you could tackle the issue, some of the dark fleet would certainly head to the breakers’ beaches — even a magic wand cannot hide their rusting obsolescence outside of sanctions dodging.

A new business model 

But would the rest re-enter the mainstream? Would the anonymous owners who have been trousering premium rates for their shadowy trades emerge from behind their shell companies? Would they have the chutzpah to seek Western maritime services, class or insurance?

And would they be reluctantly welcomed as the prodigal children, better off inside a global rules-based order, than out of it?

The real concern is that they would not want to.

Pockets of dangerous, substandard shipping have always existed. But have we inadvertently created the conditions that allow an operating model with even lower costs, minimal scrutiny and illusory insurance cover to take hold?

The age, poor condition and dangerous and deceptive shipping practices employed by these ships have created a global problem that is only going to get worse without a significant shift in sanctions policy.

The political and economic outcome of sanctions are still far from clear, but the safety and security consequences are all too apparent. 

The West is forever at risk of economic self harm if it misjudges sanctions. Everyone else is at risk if politicians fail to tackle the inherent danger of undermining the shipping safety standards in the process. 

* Lloyd’s List defines a tanker as part of the dark fleet if it is aged 15 years or over, anonymously owned and/or has a corporate structure designed to obfuscate beneficial ownership discovery, solely deployed in sanctioned oil trades, and engaged in one or more of the deceptive shipping practices outlined in US State Department guidance issued in May 2020. The figures exclude tankers tracked to government-controlled shipping entities such as Russia’s Sovcomflot, or Iran’s National Iranian Tanker Co, and those already sanctioned.

Download our explainer on the different risk profiles of the dark fleet here