russian oil price

In February 20024 we discussed a “shadow fleet” of aging and uninsured vessels transporting licensed Russian oil through the Danish Strait. “It’s a ticking environmental bomb that sails Danish waters every day.” Mads Lorenzen and Cresten Andersen wrote financial resources.

Now, as part of the ongoing North Sea survey. follow the moneyan independent platform for investigative journalism based in Amsterdam, has published two big articles on “Collapsing oil tankers threaten Europe with environmental catastrophe.”

In collaboration with Global Fishing Watch and Kyiv School of Economics Institute Jessie Finster and Dimitri Tokmechis It provides hard data on the number of vessels involved, their insurance status and routes to assess risks to Europeans and their waters.

“Since the beginning of last year,” they wrote, “Russian tankers have made nearly 1,300 voyages through the Baltic Sea and along the coasts of northwestern Europe and Britain, France and Portugal. Almost all of the vessels are heading to the Mediterranean.” On the way to Asia, an average of two to three trips were made per day. Some passed it only once, others much more often. route.”

The fact that all of these ships are uninsured or uninsured means that if a disaster occurs in European waters, Europeans will have to foot the bill. And the fact that many of these ships are over 20 years old means the risk of disaster is high. “Twenty-two years later,” the author explains. “Oil tankers typically end up in the scrap heap.”

Russia is using various methods and loopholes, such as tax havens and front companies, to evade European Union sanctions on Russian oil. In June of this year, it was announced that “27 ships, including 18 oil tankers, were placed on the European sanctions list.” This means European ports and companies are prohibited from providing “crew, supplies or financial services such as insurance” to these ships.

As Pinster and Tokmetzis explain, the new sanctions were only partially effective. “According to maritime and energy researchers at cargo tracking platform Vortexa, 30% of the vessels subject to sanctions have stopped transporting Russian oil. However, one of the six oil tankers subject to these sanctions was an oil tanker, according to data from Global. Kavya also entered Dutch, Danish and British waters on August 27.” It should also be noted that 27 ships is a very small portion of a fleet estimated to consist of approximately 600 ships in total. The authors conclude that the risk of disaster will remain high until European authorities find more effective ways to crack down on oil tankers.

for follow the money‘In his second article on Russia’s shadow fleet, Jesse Pinster spoke to Copenhagen-based maritime security expert Jan Stockbruegger about the “monster” created by Russian oil price caps in the EU and the US. For Stockbruegger, the price cap introduced in 2022 is an ineffective half-solution designed to punish the Kremlin without shaking up the global economy. “Russian oil is ‘I can’t live without it.’ “The problem is, we can’t live without it because it funds Russia’s war in Ukraine, because it’s so important to the global economy.”

As Stockbruegger explains, the effect of price caps has been overestimated. Demand for Russian oil has certainly taken a hit, but with a lot of help from China and India, about 90% of this oil is still being sold above the price ceiling. “Russia is losing money, but not as much as we thought it would lose. The Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) Institute estimated that Russia’s monthly losses have fallen to $2.5 billion from a peak of $8.4 billion in January. 2023 .So Russia’s war economy is still functioning well, at least in part because it can rely on oil exports to pay for its war with Ukraine.”

Stockbruegger concluded that economic and political self-interest may have actually defeated effective sanctions. “If they take Russian oil out of the market… the energy crisis of two years ago would be kindergarten compared to what would happen then. We need Russian oil. And that may be why they no longer sanction ships. .”

“Deep shit”

“We have had the wrong agricultural policies for too long when it comes to managing our aquatic environment, and we are now in a dire situation.” This was the colorful response from Søren Egge Rasmussen, environment spokesperson for the Danish ecosocialist party Enhedslisten, to a new report showing record levels of oxygen depletion in Danish waters. Opposition politicians are calling for stronger efforts to tackle the “heartbreaking and serious” impact of intensive farming and nitrogen emissions on water quality, according to a report by Aarhus University’s National Center for Environment and Energy. Marie Moller Munksgaard and Dorte Ibsen Bodum report all. In a separate article in the same publication, Marie Møller Munksgaard provides broader context for what the report’s lead advisor calls an “environmental catastrophe.”

As the European Environment Agency’s latest report on European water quality shows, the situation in wider Europe is not very encouraging. “Under the EU’s Water Framework Directive, only 37% of Europe’s surface waters have achieved ‘good’ or ‘high’ ecological status, and only 29% have achieved ‘good’ chemical status between 2015 and 2021.”, Leonie Carter write in Politico EuropeSummarizes the EEA report. “Countries have been able to avoid a deterioration in the state of EU waters, but ‘no overall improvement’ has been detected since the last monitoring cycle. Their slow progress is partly down to ‘lack of funding and insufficient integration of environmental objectives’ into sector-specific policies.” ”.

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