Governments should consider the safety issues of shadow fleet tankers when enacting sanction regimes, some industry players said June 3, as the number of such ships continues to grow.
Russia, Iran and Venezuela, faced with tightening Western sanctions, have been acquiring aged tankers via state or associated interests to maintain their overseas oil sales in recent years.
Those ships would lose access to insurance and maintenance services in many parts of the world after being blacklisted by governments, leading to widespread industry concerns over maritime safety.
“Those are ships that share the same ocean, the same port at the moment,” Cargill’s shipping head, Jan Dieleman, told a panel during Nor-Shipping.
“When people talk about sanctions, a lot of times they don’t understand what side effects you would have. [Those] could really [be] devastating.”
A recent study by S&P Global Commodity Insights and S&P Global Market Intelligence has found 940 crude and product tankers with an average age of 20 years are either confirmed by Western authorities to have violated sanctions or at high risk of breaching them as of May, up from 591 in April 2025.
Data from classification society DNV showed 52% of ship incidents involved ships aged 20 years or more in 2024, up from 43% a decade ago.
The global tanker fleet has continued to age partly because shipbreakers in South Asia are unwilling to recycle sanctioned tankers from shadow fleet operators, and scrap dealer GMS has suggested sanction rules could be modified to solve this issue.
Flag rules
Claire O’Neill, former UK minister for energy and clean growth, suggested at the same panel discussion that the US could target the flag states of shadow fleet tankers to address industry concerns.
The US Federal Maritime Commission launched an investigation May 21 into “flags of convenience” for their potential role in lowering safety standards in the global supply chain by competing for tonnage with little regulation, saying the International Maritime Organization’s oversight has been inefficient.
Some shipowners could register their ships in countries other than where they are based, a practice called FOC. The safety performance of such ships could be uneven, industry data suggests.
Panama is the largest flag state for the shadow fleet, with 22% of those ships registered with the country, according to the Commodity Insights and Market Intelligence study.
“Looking at what the US is doing with flag states … It will be interesting to see what happens with sanction regimes,” O’Neill said.
Source: Platts
