Sanctions drive surge in aging vessels value: Aging very large crude carriers (VLCCs) of 15 years or more, a stable of shadow fleets, are becoming more expensive to buy and deploy as the world’s dark fleets grow due to rising demand, TradeWinds reports, citing a report by maritime intelligence outfit Veson Nautical. Older ships now trade at a premium compared to newer VLCCs that remain compliant with international sanctions, the report said.

Chinese demand is a major driver for this surge, as China orders more vintage units — which now make about 81% of China’s total VLCCs orderbook over the last five years. On the back of this heightened appetite from China, the values of 20-year-old and 25-year-old VLCCs rose by 18.1% and 31.9% respectively, TradeWinds reports, citing Veson Nautical data. This is in contrast to five-year-old VLCCs, whose value only rose 0.5%.

A case in point: A 2007-build with a 307k dwt was purchased in July for USD 44 mn — almost double the median for similar vessels sold between 1992 and 2025. “This [sale] underlines how demand linked to sanctioned trades is reshaping asset values and overturning conventional market logic,” Veson Nautical’s senior vice president of values and analytics Matt Freeman said.

China’s ahead in this game for a reason: Chinese players were able to snap a big number of older VLCCs when they were undervalued, thanks to their ability to make “counter-cyclical purchases” due to the backing of local banks and state-linked leasing firms, the report found. With expanded shadow fleed capacity, China was able to clinch bigger supplies of the undervalued Russian crude, while also serving Indian demand.

Driven by reduced-price Russian crude, the overall oil demand from China and India surged — as both worked to import and store bigger quantities of the cheaper crude. For example, China imported 2.7 mn barrels a month between January 2020 and February 2022 — a figure that more than doubled to 4.2 mn barrels per month from March 2022 to July 2025. For the same period, India's demand for crude oil skyrocketed by 1,232%, from 405k barrels to 5.4 mn barrels per month.

REMEMBER — The shadow fleet is expanding: The shadow fleet of oil tankers is growing larger — paradoxically — thanks to mounting sanctions levied by Western nations on Russian and Iranian oil operations. While the constant sanction pressure has tempered dark fleets’ annual growth rate, their absolute size is still bigger than it was before sanctions, with operators more efficiently replacing blacklisted vessels with new ones.

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