The shadow fleet is stepping out of the shadows.
As the U.S. military chased a dilapidated oil tanker away from Venezuela and across the Atlantic Ocean in recent days, the fugitive ship changed its identity. Previously known as the Bella 1, the vessel rebranded as the Marinera. It no longer claimed to come from Guyana. Its new flag, painted hastily on the hull by the crew in the middle of the chase, was the Russian tricolor.
The ship’s harried assumption of a Russian identity was probably intended to deter the United States from pursuing the vessel and to raise the specter of a Russian response to any seizure, according to maritime experts. The U.S. military proceeded anyway and intercepted the ship on Wednesday in the waters between Iceland and Scotland. Russia so far has not mounted a significant response.
Still, the ship’s embrace of the Russian flag is part of a broader trend in which so-called shadow tanker vessels have sought the imprimatur of Russian protection as Western nations have stepped up enforcement against the illicit oil trade around the globe.
Five tankers that have operated recently in Venezuelan waters, including the Marinera, have switched their flags to Russia in recent days, according to a Times analysis. All of the vessels have been subjected to U.S. sanctions for shipping either Iranian or Russian oil.
Last month, 17 shadow fleet tankers took on the Russian flag, according to Lloyd’s List, a maritime intelligence and data firm, and more than 40 have done so since last June. In one incident last year, the Russian military directly intervened, sending a fighter jet as a shot across the bow to Estonia when it stopped one of the tankers.
“Essentially, there is a flight to security here,” said Richard Meade, the editor in chief of Lloyd’s List. “Having cycled through four or five fake flags, we are seeing ships now essentially register to Russia.”
For years, aged shadow vessels, like the Marinera, have provided a lifeline to states like Venezuela, Iran and Russia, as well as to nonstate actors like drug cartels, allowing them to evade sanctions by covertly shipping oil around the world. The ships often fly flags of convenience from places like the Cook Islands, or no flag at all, masking the involvement of the countries employing them.
“The whole point of the shadow fleet previously — there was this element of plausible deniability for the Russians,” Mr. Meade said. “It was opaquely owned out of a shell company in Dubai. It was registered to a Seychelles trust. It said it had insurance, but nobody saw any real paperwork. These were not things Russia wanted to say were our ships.”
Such a scheme, though, also made the ships vulnerable
