{"id":88819,"date":"2025-09-10T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-09-10T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/enterpriseam.com\/logistics\/2025\/09\/10\/oil-shadow-fleet-grows-defying-western-sanctions\/"},"modified":"2025-09-10T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2025-09-10T00:00:00","slug":"oil-shadow-fleet-grows-defying-western-sanctions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/enterpriseam.com\/logistics\/2025\/09\/10\/oil-shadow-fleet-grows-defying-western-sanctions\/","title":{"rendered":"Oil shadow fleet grows defying Western sanctions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Shadow fleets of oil tankers are growing larger<\/strong>, paradoxically driven by heavier sanctions levied by Western nations on Russian and Iranian oil operations, <\/span>Reuters<\/a> reports, citing commodity outfit Trafigura\u2019s chief economist Saad Rahim.<\/span><\/p>\n

Shadow fleet pressure is constant: <\/strong>The US sanctioned<\/a> 20 entities and 10 vessels for their alleged role in Iran\u2019s crude and petrochemicals trade as recently as last month, and threatened<\/a> further tariffs against Moscow to pressure Russia into agreeing to a ceasefire in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

While this constant pressure has slowed shadow fleets\u2019 growth rate<\/strong>, their absolute size is still bigger than it was before sanctions, with operators more efficiently replacing blacklisted vessels with new ones, Rahim is quoted as saying. <\/p>\n

REMEMBER- <\/strong>Shadow <\/strong>fleet operators are kind of resourceful: <\/strong>Tactics to evade sanctions have been evolving<\/a>, with players like Iran embracing smaller and more agile tankers \u2014 specifically Aframax and Suezmax vessels \u2014 to transport its crude to ports with shallow berths that are less known and largely not wary of the impact of US sanctions. Ship-to-ship transfers have also been used to skirt monitoring \u2014 driving an 86% m-o-m surge in Iranian oil exports to China last March, despite successive sanction waves on its trade operations at the time. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sanctioned ships are being switched out with newer ones to duck Western levies on vessels moving sanctioned crude<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":88820,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"single-feature.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":false,"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_primary_brand":0,"newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_show_updated_date":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[119,55,226,123,32,726],"brand":[],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"class_list":["post-88819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-logistics-in-the-news","tag-iran","tag-logistics-in-the-news","tag-russia","tag-shipping-maritime","tag-trade","tag-usa","wpautop","entry"],"acf":{"mongo_id":"1a67fe86-5a93-4d5c-84a0-ba42bcfba0cc","order":"10","is_powered_by":false,"story_type":"1","photo_url":"https:\/\/ent.news\/2025\/9\/572.jpg","photo_position":"above","homepage_title":"","full_issue_title":"Oil shadow fleet grows defying Western sanctions","related_issue":[88803],"teaser":"Sanctioned ships are being switched out with newer ones to duck Western levies on vessels moving sanctioned crude","voice_url":"https:\/\/s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com\/ent.news\/audio\/2025\/9\/.81114fc4-95d6-4bcf-9c11-17d92e8ab5ea.mp3"},"yoast_head":"\nOil shadow fleet grows defying Western sanctions - 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