NEARLY every day for the past three weeks, Lloyd’s List has emailed or called the London offices of insurers understood to be connected with Ceres I (IMO: 9229439), the Iranian oil-carrying spoofing tanker detained by Malaysian officials along with another ship after colliding in international waters last month.

Nearly every day for the past three weeks, the result is the same: emails ignored, mobile phones ringing out, or an apologetic receptionist explaining that nobody is available to help.

Ceres I isn’t just any ordinary very large crude carrier. The 25-year-old, Sao Tomé and Principe-flagged ship has spent the past five years using deceptive and dangerous shipping practices to transport millions of barrels of US-sanctioned Iranian oil to China.

The vessel’s anonymous owners, hiding behind Hong Kong-incorporated ownership and management shell companies, has exploited all the regulatory gaps in international shipping. 

The circumstances surrounding the July 18 casualty have yet to fully emerge, except that it was in ballast and at anchor due to unspecified technical difficulties when a naphtha-laden panamax tanker Hafnia Nile (IMO: 9766217) collided with it while sailing at 14 knots. Many of the crew were injured and both vessels are write-offs.

Ceres I was flagged with a privately managed registry so obscure that the Cyprus-based company behind it (according to its website) cannot be traced, let alone contacted. 

There is no known recognised organisation or classification society on shipping databases for Ceres I. P&I insurance was outside the International Group of P&I clubs, but Lloyd’s List is unable to directly confirm reports that cover was with a specific marine insurer that is backed by Lloyd’s of London syndicates.

It’s a simple “yes” or “no” question required of the insurer and the broker, and one that neither has provided.

That accountability and transparency fails in London — and not any of the usual hidey-holes where dark fleet shipping tends to congregate — is a black mark for a city claiming to be a world maritime leader and the birthplace of modern marine insurance.

The Malaysian and Singapore maritime authorities (Singapore-flagged Hafnia Nile) provided sparse details about the casualty due to the sensitivity. However, credit is due to Malaysia’s coastguard for chasing down Ceres I when it attempted to flee the scene and after intercepting it, accompanied the VLCC to Malaysian waters where it was detained.

Make no mistake, he “dark fleet”* shipping oil and gas threaten the environment, maritime safety and the regulatory integrity of global trade. 

Without accountability and transparency at the heart of global shipping for more than 300 years how can anybody be assured that the bifurcation in standards triggered by Western sanctions won’t be arrested?

Lloyd’s List first wrote in 2021 about how sanctions-circumventing tankers were exploiting a network of P&I insurers outside the International Group, who were issuing certificates to tankers linked to evasive and deceptive shipping practices.

Little has changed. This week Lloyd’s List wrote how an  anonymously owned tanker loading the inaugural liquefied natural gas cargo at a US-sanctioned Russian Arctic project had P&I cover provided by a Lloyd’s-backed insurer.

Satellite imagery showed the tanker calling at the Arctic port, while Automatic Identification System signals showed it in the Barents Sea. Another LNG carrier, part of the same managed fleet, was also undertaking the same practice by manipulating its AIS signals to appear elsewhere.

The information about the LNG carrier only came to light because the registry of Palau, who flagged the ship, demonstrated accountability and transparency by passing on this information about the Blue Card upon request, not the marine insurer, who did not answer emails or phone calls.

The anonymously owned tanker is one of a nascent dark fleet of LNG carriers now emerging as Western regulators tighten enforcement and compliance.

Last month Lloyd’s List wrote how a tanker laden with Russian crude from Ust-Luga switched class mid-voyage to avoid an unscheduled survey into a string of dangerous deficiencies, which emerged after an inspection in mid-June.

The Cook Islands-flagged tanker is one of 26 with the Pacific Islands registry that was previously insured by Ingosstrakh. Since Ingosstrakh was recently sanctioned by the UK, the Cook Islands registry requested all ships with Blue Cards issued by the Russian insurer find alternative providers.

Have these and other tankers shifted to insurers with exposure to Lloyd’s? We’ll never know while accountability and transparency are not seen as good practice among all marine insurers there.

The vast majority of marine insurers at Lloyd’s do, of course, do the right thing. But taking on the dark fleet means turning down business or no longer ignoring the obvious.

Yes, we know there are retrospective sanctions exclusion clauses that protect marine insurers from liability should a vessel entered with them breach sanctions. There are some at Lloyd’s that opine to Lloyd’s List that these clauses are effectively a licence to print money because of the no-risk premise they provide.

There may be a cost to accountability and transparency. But surely without it, international shipping goes back to the future and the 1980s and the days of the “ships of shame”.

Back then the global campaign against substandard shipping by Australian politician Peter Morris and his report about “ships of shame” triggered a clean-up of dangerous marine practices that cost lives and endangered many others.

It’s time to stop avoiding the realities of geopolitics. Enforcement and compliance have landed at the feet of marine insurers, like it or not. Avoiding the hard questions only delays not resolves the issue.