- A ship-to-ship transfer of Russian oilhappened in the middle of the Atlantic in May, according to Bloomberg.
- It was an unusual distance from the sheltered waters where transfers typically occur.
A recent news article published in the Business Insider states that Russian oil is getting transferred in the high seas for the first time as wary buyers try to avoid affiliation with Moscow.
In May, a ship-to-ship transfer of Russian oil happened in the high seas of the Atlantic — an unusual distance from typical sheltered waters where risks of oil spills are lower, according to Bloomberg.
Russian crude sellers are more often leaning into alternative methods to get products to buyers as war in Ukraine rages on. Wary buyers have attempted to avoid affiliation with the sanctioned nation through obfuscating the origins of crude and trading oil marked “destination unknown.”
Between May 26 and May 27, per Bloomberg, the supertanker Lauren II took cargo from the Aframax tanker Zhen I in the middle of the ocean, about 300 miles west of Madeira.
The move marked the first Russian crude transfer on the high seas, and the Lauren II is now drifting in the mid-Atlantic potentially awaiting another cargo transfer.
“As normal trade routes start to close for Russian crude and products, and as purchases are increasingly punished and vilified, we should expect to see more subterfuge and obfuscation in the months ahead,” Matt Smith, lead oil analyst at Kpler, told Insider.
Large cargo ships are viable options
These large cargo ships, according to Bloomberg, are economically viable options for long-distance transfers because they can store about three times the amount of a smaller ship like the Zhen I.
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reported that Russian oil products are still reaching the US market because traders are blending and refining it elsewhere. Supplies believed to be at least partially composed of Russian oil arrived in New York and New Jersey last month, which likely came from India, the report said.
“It is impossible to completely extricate Russian energy from the global market,” Smith told Insider previously.
“If India is taking Russian crude and blending it with other crudes and then refining it into gasoline or diesel, there’s no way to separate what is made from Russian crude and what isn’t. On this basis, any clean products refined in India and sent to the US could have originated from Russian crude, it is just impossible to tell.”
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Source: Business Insider
