The Shadow Fleet Fueling Russia’s War | Bloomberg Investigates 

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That "shadowy world" as you call it is actually the rest of the world, that is slowly but surely learning to function without Western financial and technological monopolies.

Just because Russian oil is flowing outside of Western rules and regulations, does not mean it is illegal. Just because Russia is not using Western ships and Western insurance, does not mean it is illegal. The rules of the West are not the rules of the world.

The chief concern of Washington is that it's not them profiting from these deals.

Since sanctions against Russia began in 2014, the US has increased imports of Russian oil by 30 percent. Many tankers fly the flag of third countries and no longer indicate their port of destination after loading in Russian ports. These ships sometimes meet on the high seas or near American territorial waters and transfer their cargo to American ships there. Oil tankers and liquid gas tankers are relatively rare. The EU and the USA tried to get hold of these ships, the USA had the better cards. This “shadow fleet” brings Russian oil, natural gas and liquid gas to the USA and Europe (EU). In 2023, Germany purchased liquid gas from Russia through intermediaries (Belgium) for 30 billion euros. The EU imported goods and services worth 183 billion euros from Russia in 2022 alone. If you take a closer look, you will find that these ships operate on behalf of European and American shipping companies. Which flag they fly under is secondary. The European Commission has explicitly exempted three major Russian financial institutions from sanctions. All transactions between the EU and Russia pass through these institutions. The USA continues to buy its uranium from Russia, because the Russian company ROSATOM controls 47% of the world trade in uranium and nuclear fuel rods. Bloomberg only scratches the surface with his report and doesn't look behind the scenes. The USA and the EU are pointing their fingers at anyone who still officially trades with Russia and threatening these countries, but are no better themselves.

Why do we care where Russian oil and gas goes? Europe said they do not want cheap Russian energy anymore. Europe only wants to buy American energy for 500% more money. Following these tankers around is like breaking up with your girlfriend and checking her facebook 10 years later, its pathetic.

Your concern is not environmental, your concern is financial and economical.

The US should talk about all their shadow operations that are happening worldwide.

This is not 'shadow fleet' dummies, this is another 'alternative oil market'. When it doesn't flow by you, you call it shadow fleet.

Why is it a shadow fleet? They operate under their own rules, certified under their own respective governments, not entering ports where they can't get insurance or are banned from so on. If anything they are just a full on competitor to the market. As someone who has been working in chartering product tankers and cargo operations, these owners existed way before any of these events. And they were successfully moving cargo around the med and black sea. Its only now you take note of them. And they are just like any other LLC registered gosh knows where, with a 10k USD capital. Its also funny that these restrictions have basically forced an industry dominated by europe, for many centuries, to break up and migrate. Just shows how "isolated" Russia is.

This video in a nutshell- "Other countries are working together and agreeing to prices for goods and services for the benefit of the people in those countries. How can we stop this?"

"They're not buying our insurance because we prohibited them from buying it. So now we call them with spooky words 🤣"

US and Europe are like: Somebody stop them😂😂

The other issue not covered is the shipping insurance area where the big western companies are not getting the income they had previously received. Russia is using its small fleet to get out of Black Sea to the larger Greek tankers. Oil prices are set at EU values but the shipping cost is inflated to the client such that Russia gets its$75 a barrel it wants and the shipping company gets paid at world parity of $85:00 a barrel on delivery. Win win for all but the EU.

The "Price cap" is a mechanism announced unilaterally by certain powers using their own Laws to enforce them - no other countries are required to accept the commandments of the EU or the US as to what they can do, since their policy decisions do not carry any binding power.

Price cap is a prime example of academic gymnastics that only works on paper and how insane policies have become

Shadow tanker Environment accident?? What about volontary north stream pipeline explosion??

Shadow? With those volumes? …that’s a major fleet !

Ru doesn't have a "shadow fleet" -- Ru has a "fleet"

Can you make one about the American taxpayer's money fueling the other side of the war?

It's not about Russia finding to dodge the sanctions, it's about, rest of the world trying to save their economy and not complying with vested interest of EU and America.

US still buying uranium from Russia and has a deal of sending astronauts through Russia,can you imagine ?

You cannot sanction something that you not buy not sell and cross your territory.

The term "Illegal Trading" (16:12) is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. The sale of goods and services should not be restricted.

Outsmarted on ALL levels. I'm all for it.

The West is not the world, note that down. Next time you hear a western leader use the words "world/global/International" in their speech or argument, just know they mean the west

The amount of annoyance in this video is mindblowing, western countries think they can control or dictate what other sovereign countries can/can't do...

No one tells India what to do in what way. India will take its own decisions for the interest of its own Indian people.

I like how when the talking heads at Bloombers bring up "Russian invasion of Ukraine" they always must throw in a bunch of qualifiers like "illegal and unprovoked attack on a European country". The assumption being that US and NATO led invasions of primarily non-European (except Yugoslavia) countries populated by dark-skinned peoples were of course perfectly "legal" and somehow "provoked".

What the politicians do not understand is that Shipping is self-regulated, and that Cargoes, will always find their way home. It is a only bcase of "double standards" as well as stupidity,' to speak about the 'dark fleet' / price caps etc, when all EU countries and the US who are the originators of the so called sanctions are buying all the Rus diesel, gasoline and all byproducts which, after being dark-shipped to India is baptized "Indian".

non-western tankers fleet and services are gonna be the norm in the near future, and they won’t be called “shadow fleet” from there on!

That "Shadowy World" is 85% of the World. The other 15% is called The West. 😂

There is absolutely nothing wrong with this.... its a business deal

It is NOT a shadow fleet... it is a FLEET! In the last three years, Sovkomflot and Rosnefteflot have received 20 new crude oil tankers in their fleets, and all these tankers were built in Russian shipyards. It's not an old fleet either, at least not older than any other that sails the oceans...

so the most important thing from this video : they dont buy uk insurance right ? 😂

If I was an investigative journalist, this is one of the jobs I would allow an intern to carry out.

So shadow figures can make money off of arms deals but others can't make money off of oil..😂

The failure of the sanctions and the economic war on Putin shatters the neoliberal orthodoxy about economic warfare. Just because they managed to somewhat work against Venezuela or North Korea doesn't mean it will work against a major power like Russia

The world is no longer western-centric. That ship has sailed - pun intended.

BRICS nations working as a team to do what they initially wanted to do and that is to have economic systems that are different from the West

I believe AIS spoofing is rather easy to do. Also the ship Turba might be using AIS which runs in Stealth mode, where the system only listen for AIS signal from other ships nearby but does not emits any signal from it's own AIS.

These ships not operating by the Western rules doesn't mean they are illegal. Grow up kids 😂

We know who are fueling wars in another countries .

You can see from this video that how much Bloomberg (US government backend) is fearing that the world is no longer under US 😅

Dodge sanctions - lol - every country can trade how they wants. Empires that have previously tried to stop countries trading have ultimately met their end - lol

The only way to stop crude oil is a physical embargo. Crude can be reloaded at sea and change ships. Hence why Russia has always valued crude and NG is seen as a byproduct of crude extraction, meanwhile the EU has pledged to buy NG in order to lessen the RUS flaring at the extraction point

Commerce and money will always flow forward, it has for millennia. No amount of rules, laws and sanctions will stop that.

Sanctions can be seen as war thus skirting them is part of defense.

If you destroy terminals, then there is no more shadow fleet.

Given the right motivation these midsea refulings could be stopped tommorow, sadly NATO & the US have no real balls to stop this activity....

I don’t get how this price cap works. Who are we to tell some countries the price they can sell their stuff for??

America law does not apply to Russia for certain

This video is hilarious. From the music to the overly dramatic terms and constant suggestion that this is somehow illegal. It isn’t. Sanctions and price caps like this are not international law. They are national. It is the EU and US saying to big companies, “Make a choice. Do business with us or them.” The EU always knew that the price cap would be circumvented by some. In exactly the same way that the Iranian sanctions regime has been circumvented. Everyone in the industry knew this would happen. Getting prissy about it is silly. If the EU really wanted to destroy Russian revenue then they should invest heavily in renewables globally (not just in the EU) and start fracking the HUGE amounts of shale oil and gas deposits in places like Poland. As every school kid learning economics knows, reducing demand and increasing supply is the way to collapse the price of something… …But that would upset both the oil companies and the environmentalists. So here we are blaming the Russians for responding in exactly the way we expected. 😂

Wait, so neither Russia nor India are breaking any rules and America are salty they aren't getting a cut? Colour me shocked. If the rules are wrong, then change them.

You're presenting this like something bad, when its not

Proud to see India standing its ground.. As Dr Jai Sankar famously said - Europe's problems are the worlds problems, but the world's problems are not Europe's problems. Not anymore..

The one who has energy will always have power to rule.

Created a price ceiling and got surprised there was a black market.

Indian oil is laced with freedom and democracy.. so stop complaining!

U.S. interference in markets at home or abroad is always a winning policy, right? How'd that prohibition on alcohol work out a century ago?

You know it's propaganda when they say it was an unprovoked War

After reading most of the comments I'm getting the conclusion that is more and more difficult to fool the public!

Bottom line: if there's a middle men, means seller is loosing a margin.

I couldn't see how it would work in the first place. You can't just remove that much oil from the market.

I don't agree with one country or a group of countries trying to decide how much another country can sell their exports for that's just ridiculous and sounds like tyranny

When we talk about sanctions on Russia, an important question is who imposed those sanctions, what's the legitimacy of the sanction imposer? Lastly, why should the world abide to the sanctions??? Those times have gone! Only the US and western media have headaches to make sure the sanctions work for their own interests. No nation has power on other nations nowadays!!!!

Some Western leaders along with supporters and media corporations have succeeded in getting BRICS and others to adopt onshoring, nearshoring and friend-shoring principles. This creates increased competition for Western businesses and it promotes resilience in other parts of the World. It was entirely predictable and as has been mentioned, if sanctions were genuine then the costs to the West, especially Europe, would be huge. They have become masters of looking like they're taking meaningful action while avoiding some of the short term inflationary downside.

"They are gonna be accidents " You mean like Nordstream. 😂

If we dont know you, you arent alowed to have that much money is basicly what they are saying.

So basically… we’re gonna try to tell the seller how much he’s allowed to charge the buyers (us) bc we don’t wanna give him too much money. Would America ever abide by Russias demand for such. Cap or exports for their financial gain. This is dumb.

"Diese Arbeit ist ein wahres Kunstwerk. Bravo!

It's incredible to see the difference in standard citizen outlooks with this documentary. We've as a population have realised that US/UK etc have shafted us for so long from their profiteering/Tax from the world, that were now happy they've avoided idiotic western tax to drop into the elite pockets. Keep going. Create your own system, as you are your own country.

India is the middle man between Russia and the West 😅....

What the problem. US stealing oil from smaller countries what the bloody problem lol. 😂😂😂😂😂❤

Feels like we on track for the dystopian future of William Gibson’s The Peripheral with The Jackpot apocalypse and the emerging the Klept

Simple - block all these shadow fleet tankers from using the Suez Canal. Unless they meet all the requirements of registration, insurance etc. they should not be allowed to use it. In that way they will be forced to sail around the Cape which takes far longer & is not the best by any means.

The music lol. Guys it’s not a horror movie

NATO is expecting China, India, and the rest of the world to obey NATO rules? That is refreshing!

New Achievement unlocked: The Shadow Fleet.

who gave ursula dunderskank the authority to impose a price cap on countries outside the eu?

This is a very worrying symptom....if India and China aren't on board with any sanctions on a particular country, those sanctions are SEVERELY blunted ,and the thing is these markets are still growing...in 20 years time The balance of power will swing back East fully as it has always been ...the USA and it's allies are wasting precious political capital beginning with the invasion of Iraq and support for Israel has only accelerated this wastage, political capital they might have used to convince at least India to be in their camp...now India and Russia are firmly in one camp and very soon India and China will start using Russia as a go between and this is where the BRICS alliance becomes powerful....it's not because they like each other but it's because they have a platform where they can discuss their issues as peers and focus on creating a world order that favours them, India and China may not like each other but as long as they have a platform where they can cooperate, they will spend less resources on looking for ways to finish each other but more resources on economic development.

Gotta love that horror movie style propaganda background musics by Western media. The same reporter who said he had no idea about the ship and ownership suddenly pulled out info from his rear to say ship is not serviceable. His weird self-embarrassing smile after says it all

No country is obligated to answer any country to whom the money gap between import-export goes to. If Russia is selling the oil, then they have authorithy of resources they control and to whom the money goes to.

Why not !!? Cuz they're not paying tax for London and New York!!!

How can they survive without Us. Not acceptable

how dare they live without us unbareble

There are six major points this article misses. * The goal of the sanctions was to reduce Russian oil revenue, and that has happened. The claims made here that Russia has not been punished are false. It is true that Russia is selling oil above the price cap now, but they are not selling near the global spot price. * Even though China and India are buying Russian oil above the price cap, they are competing to buy it only with one another, and so the price is substantially lower than that for e.g. Brent crude. * Because 9% of worldwide oil flow is at this discounted rate, there is downward pressure on the price of Brent crude. This has benefitted oil importers everywhere, which includes the US and most of Europe. * The world has lived with a production-side cartel (OPEC) for 5 decades. This is the first we've seen of a demand-side cartel (the Price Cap Coalition). * The conditions that made a demand-side cartel possible are the first-ever year-over-year dip in worldwide oil consumption, driven by COVID. That dip has passed and consumption is rising again. Will the demand-side cartel be sustainable? * Electric vehicles have displaced over 1.5% of worldwide crude oil flows. This is a small enough amount that the downward pressure on oil prices is not large. But this demand reduction is permanent and increasing. It's not yet clear if this permanent demand loss will grow larger than the (temporary) demand loss from COVID. If it does, it suggests the growth in power of demand-side cartels and a growing incentive for oil producers to destroy one another's production capacity through warfare.

Shadow fleet??? In other words just commercial shipping not insured by London insurers.

Thank you journalists of the world

Senseless war... Senseless sanctions... Stupidity survives...

2:20 "unprovoked illegal invasion of a European nation" where does this guy live Mars ?

just two small tankers hanging out with each other 🥺 (like if it is not visible from the satellite imaging)

It's so funny watching these Americans and Brits scratch their head at Russia. If "the shoe was on the other foot", we'd have a 5 part Netflix series already about how American And Britain took on Putain with their Shadow Fleet 🙄 - the propaganda is real.

I Love the UK stooges Crying 😭 on this program that they cant stop Russia from selling oil.

Shadow fleet! no way freedom fleet.

Sanctions just make doing business slightly inconvenient.

It might be illegal for you in the UK, but it's very well legal for the rest of the world 🌎

Shadow fleet ? The seas are a global common. Not private property or ruled by the West.

I think we should implement a price cap on Porsches. It’s not fair that my dream car is this expensive. 😅

I don’t get it, what is wrong with what Russia is doing? It’s one nation against like 15 at least. They gotta do what they gotta do, this wouldn’t be happening if the us and Europe would just mind there own business. Russia didn’t say anything when UK and US went at war with Iraq and Africa and Vietnam