Regulators around the world worried about the risks posed by the so-called dark fleet of tankers have seen ample evidence of how shady operations lead to environmental damage.
The latest example, as highlighted by TankerTrackers.com, shows a messy ship-to-ship transfer in the Persian Gulf.
TankerTrackers.com, one of the world’s leading watchers of illicit cargo movement, has tracked a recent STS between two aframaxes near the coastlines of Kuwait, Iraq and Iran, where satellite imagery shows a 5 km spill which analysts suggest is the equivalent to around 5,400 barrels of oil.
“These spills happen regularly and go unreported,” TankerTrackers.com stated in a recent post.
These spills happen regularly and go unreported
Many countries, especially in Europe, have sought to deter dark fleet STS operations with mixed success in that the tankers tend to quickly find new areas nearby to carry out their cargo swaps.
For instance, Israeli data firm Windward has recently detected a new STS hub in the Aegean Sea in between Lesbos and Chios. It comes after STS operations off the previous Russian tanker hotspot, Kalamata, ceased.
Since May 1, citing military exercises, the Greek navy has put out of bounds an area in international waters southeast of the Peloponnese islands, six nautical miles off the coast of Laconia, a patch of water that had seen Russian-linked tankers dot the horizon over the past couple of years.
Another area within European waters that is seeing growing amounts of Russian energy-swapping ships is around Augusta in Sicily.
Further north, many littoral states around the Baltic have repeatedly discussed measures to curb the threat of an environmental disaster from a shadow tanker running into difficulty.
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