Carnegie analyst says Russia's tanker fleet is less separate than the 'shadow' label suggests

A quarter of the world's tanker fleet has carried Russian cargo in 2024, according to an analysis by Sergey Vakulenko for the Carnegie Endowment. Of 2,849 oil tankers examined using AIS tracking data, 735 had loaded at least one cargo in a Russian port this year. Vakulenko finds that the fleet serving Russia is on average three to four years older than those serving Saudi Arabia and the UAE, while Iran uses no tankers younger than ten years. He concludes that the so-called shadow fleet is 'neither as separate nor as obscure' as might have been thought.

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