They tried to deprive Russia of the largest oil transporter: tankers will have to change their registration

“Black Gold” will be transported under the flags of Mongolia and Gabon

The Indian company Gatik Ship, whose ships, until recently, bypassing sanctions, transported Russian oil by sea, has reduced the composition of its armada tenfold. This is due to the refusal of British insurers to issue policies to tankers convicted of transporting sanctioned raw materials. True, the export of “black gold” from Russia is unlikely to suffer from such a loss: the ships of our “shadow fleet” fly the flags of other countries that are not subject to restrictions, for example, Gabon and Mongolia, which does not even have access to the sea.

If in April the flotilla of the Indian company, which is helping Moscow to transport oil by sea under Western sanctions, consisted of 42 tankers, by July only 4 ships remained in the management of Gatik Ship. According to Bloomberg, Delhi has by no means lost interest in Russian “black gold”. The reason is more prosaic. At the end of May, the British classification society Lloyd’s Register withdrew the certification of the lion’s share of Indian ships suspected of transporting Russian raw materials, which are then sold at a price higher than the limit “ceiling” set by the G7 countries of $60 per barrel. Thus, the majority of Gatik Ship’s tankers were denied the insurance policies and seaworthiness tests required to obtain permission to enter international ports.

“Mumbai-based Gatik Ship Management attracted the attention of Western regulators last year,” says Andrey Loboda, an economist and director of communications at BitRiver. “It is believed that the maritime operator has assembled a strong squadron of several dozen tankers, the main direction of cargo transportation of which was Russian liquid hydrocarbons.” Literally in a matter of months, Gatik Ship has become the largest transporter of “black gold” from our country. The firm handled more than 30 million barrels on a single shared flight, mostly destined for Indian buyers. The formed flotilla became the basis of the so-called “shadow fleet”, which allowed our country to bypass Western restrictions and maintain significant volumes of oil exports. The loss of access to such a powerful resource could deal a painful blow to the supply of Russian raw materials to India, which has been buying record volumes of “black gold” from our country since May.

However, it is still too early for domestic producers to mourn the loss of a large Asian market. Back in May, Gatik Ship decided to re-register its tankers under the flags of other countries. According to the interactive online service Lloyd’s List, which provides detailed information about the movement of ships, at the end of May, information about 15 ships of an Indian company insured through the American Club classifier disappeared from its database. In turn, according to the shipping news service TradeWinds, a similar number of tankers Gatik Ship disappeared from the information system of the British Association of Marine Insurers NorthStandard.

The relevant agencies have already tracked in which direction the Gatik Ship fleet has moved. According to a study by the navigation portal Vesselfinder, four Indian freight tankers will now fly the flag of one little-known Mongolian company registered in Gabon, and at least twenty more tankers will now be registered in Gabon ports and attached to the UAE shipping registry.

According to the leading expert of the Financial University and the National Energy Security Fund Igor Yushkov, most likely, Gatik Ship was created and purposefully replenished the fleet of its tankers for the transportation of Russian oil. The company prepared in advance for the fact that, due to the restrictions imposed on our country, it will constantly fall under secondary sanctions. “The Indian company is unlikely to refuse to transport Russian hydrocarbons and continue to ignore the price ceiling. Her tactics are extremely simple: sensing the approach of another supply problem, she will simply change the jurisdiction of her ships, as well as the flags under which her tankers fly, and the ports to which ships sail. Western countries understand that they have driven themselves into a difficult situation: on the one hand, they are forced to force everyone to comply with the restrictions they have introduced, and on the other hand, they realize that sanctions are ineffective and do not work as intended. Such a classification “leapfrog”, apparently, will continue in the future, so there is no reason for special concern about the reduction in Russian oil supplies to India, for example,” the analyst believes.