THE executive director of Maritime Cook Islands, which has deflagged 12 tankers since May for breaching Western sanctions on Russia or Iran, said the Pacific Islands registry was not being used to facilitate the trade of oil on a so-called ‘dark fleet’* of tankers.

Tony Manarangi said that trade in Russia oil was permitted “as long as the price cap is enforced” and that only the US prohibited trade in Iranian oil, not Europe or the UK.

The registry “rejected any assertion that tankers on the Cook Islands register are part of the ‘dark fleet’,” he said in an emailed response to Lloyd’s List.

Maritime Cook Islands response followed analysis published last week showing that the Pacific Islands nation had surpassed Gabon to become the world’s fastest growing registry in 2024.

Of the 320 ships in the register, some 208 are tankers which comprise 93% of total tonnage when measured by deadweight.

Fifty elderly and anonymously owned Russia-trading tankers over 20,000 dwt joined so far in 2024, data from Lloyd’s List Intelligence shows.

That’s seen the Cook Islands registry more than double its size in the past seven months. Last year 35 tankers over 20,000 dwt flagged with Cook Islands compared with nine in 2022 and three in 2021, data shows.

All but a handful trade exclusively in either Russia or Iran, vessel-tracking from Lloyd’s List Intelligence and data analytics provider Vortexa shows. The growth mirrored that of Gabon, another small registry that specialised in flagging Russia-trading tonnage.

Numbers for the Cook Islands include 11 of the 12 tankers that Manarangi said had been cancelled for breaching EU27 or UK sanctions on Russia or US sanctions on Iran.

In many cases, registries provided owners with three months’ notice upon cancellation.

The first cancellation was on May 3, and the last three were given on July 24, information from Cook Islands registry provided to Lloyd’s List shows.

The growth of the Cook Islands registry has not gone unnoticed in regulatory circles, as the anonymous owners of elderly tonnage deployed in Russian trades undertake a range of sanctions-skirting tactics to avoid Western regulators, which have stepped up enforcement and compliance in the past eight months.

Twenty-six of the Cook Islands-flagged tankers were formerly managed by Dubai-based Radiating World Shipping Services and Star Voyages Shipping Services, which were both sanctioned by UK regulators in December for breaching the G7 oil price cap on Russia.

However, days after the sanction was announced the anonymous owners removed any tankers that remained with these companies to newly formed shipmanagement entities.

Those ships remained flagged with Cook Islands and were not on the list of 12 tankers provided to Lloyd’s List by Maritime Cook Islands for this reason.

“Any vessel or manager or owner designated on the Office of Foreign Assets Control or UK Sanctions List or the very new EU Sanctions List are immediately removed from the register,” said Manarangi. 

He did not respond to questions asking why ships that were still managed by Radiating World and Star Voyages fleets when these companies were sanctioned were not deflagged.

The 26 tankers were also insured by Ingosstrakh, also designated by the UK government in June.

Manarangi said all Cook Islands-flagged tankers with Ingosstrakh had been asked to find new insurers or reflag within seven days. He did not answer questions about who the new insurers were, referring Lloyd’s List to the ISM managers and owners.

The fleet owners and their ISM managers cannot be traced, which is common with many dark fleet vessels. Beneficial owners hide behind a complex web of frequently changing ownership and management companies often traced to hotel business centres or empty buildings, with seemingly unconnected people used as a corporate “front” for these businesses to further obfuscate ownership.

The Cook Islands registry, along with many other marine service providers, such as insurers, must rely on attestations from shipowners that Russian oil carried on the ships complies with the cap. Alongside import bans on Russian oil and shipping imposed by the G7 and Australia 18 months ago, Western marine service providers cannot ship crude or refined products to third countries unless cargo is sold below a certain price.

In turn, shipowners rely on attestations from charterers, or the buyers and sellers of the Russian oil their ship is transporting, that assert oil is cap-compliant. These must now be done on a voyage-by-voyage basis since February.

Falsely declared attestations meant that the cap was easily circumvented, a UK parliamentary inquiry was told in April.

“We are as confident as all others who require attestations that they will not be false. However, if it should come to the attention of the registry that an attestation is false, the vessel will be de-registered whether sanctioned or not,” said Manarangi.

“The registry has recently requested all recognised insurers to confirm insurance cover is in accordance with the relevant convention obligations and for those who insure vessels trading in Russian crude or petroleum product to provide to the registry their processes and procedures for verification that the price cap is being adhered to.”

* 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