According to the Spanish newspaper CincoDías, 20% of Russian crude oil is exported through the Mediterranean. At least 15 small vessels have set sail from two Russian ports to the Spanish enclave of Ceuta since December. There, off the Moroccan coast, and just outside Spanish territorial waters, the oil is being transferred onto larger tankers destined for Indian and Chinese ports. This is about 700,000 barrels of crude oil.
Since the West banned Russian crude in early December, China and India have been Russia’s top oil buyers. For example, Beijing increased its imports of Russian crude by 31% in 2022, imports from India even increased sixteen times. 20% of this export goes through Europe.
Chinese transshipment companies
The vessels CincoDías writes about come from the oil platforms of the Russian state oil company Transneft in the ports of Primorsk and Ust-Luga and sail through the Baltic Sea and the Strait of Gibraltar to Ceuta. Off the coast of Morocco they transfer their cargoes to much larger VLCC tankers (very large crude carriers, ed), which can carry up to 2 million barrels of oil.
Illustrative of how the new hares are doing: Sixty-five percent of transhipment operations in the Ceuta area are carried out by Chinese companies. The VLCCs then sail to Asia via the Cape of Good Hope, as fully loaded they are too heavy for the shallow Suez Canal.
From ship to ship
The Russians, of course, conduct these so-called ship-to-ship operations in international waters. After all, their tankers cannot enter Spanish territorial waters. And Ceuta? Although the enclave is Spanish, Spain and Morocco (which have claimed the enclave for decades) have never defined the territorial waters. It is therefore a gray area in which the Spanish navy does not dare to enter for fear of a diplomatic confrontation with Morocco.
Spain’s Directorate General of Merchant Shipping, which oversees shipping in Spanish waters, told CincoDías that “these practices have been going on for some time without Spain being able to ban or regulate their circumstances.” Ship-to-ship operations do not violate international law or the sanctions imposed by Brussels.
BNR energy expert Mark Beekhuis does not rule out that the oil is no longer pure Russian at the time of transshipment. “Why skip Russian oil in sight off a Spanish port? Even if during the transport you no longer want it to be Russian oil, if it were Russian oil, you would no longer be able to ensure that transport.’
According to Beekhuis, it would be worth “quickly mixing it with other stuff, so that it’s no longer Russian”. “Probably, if I fill it out now, they probably have a half-empty tanker. Then a Russian arrives and fills the other half and then the origin is suddenly uncertain».
AIS manipulation
Not allowed, but what the Russians often do: hide the positions of their ships by manipulating the Automatic Identification System (AIS). For 20 years, every cargo or passenger ship was required to have this navigation system on board to avoid collisions. It turns out that Russian ships are messing with their AIS, like the Russian tanker Kapitan Schemilkin.
She left Istanbul on December 4 for Novorossiysk, a Russian port on the Black Sea. A two-day trip. Yet the vessel never arrived, but she has been sighted around Cyprus and Malta. Manipulation of the AIS is not new, incidentally, BNR energy expert Mark Beekhuis also agrees. Both Iran and Venezuela manipulated when the countries were boycotted. AIS is also often tampered with when vessels engage in illegal fishing or simply smuggle contraband.