0:02 On this episode of What's Going On with
0:04 Shipping, the United States has just
0:07 seized another Dark Fleet tanker off the
0:09 coast of Venezuela.
0:12 What is the Dark Fleet? I'm your host,
0:14 Salaglano. Welcome to today's episode.
0:16 So, we periodically do these episodes
0:18 called Shipping 101 to give you the
0:20 basics of ocean shipping. We've done
0:22 about five of them. You can link over to
0:24 all of them right above there. What is
0:25 the Dark Fleet? I mean, we've heard
0:27 references of the Dark Fleet before in
0:29 Star Wars, for example. Although
0:31 Imperial destroyers really not the goal
0:34 you want in terms of accuracy, just not
0:36 that good. We heard this fleet referred
0:38 to as the Shadow Fleet from one of the
0:40 best I think sci-fi series that it's
0:42 underrated out there, which is Babylon
0:44 5. Little bit of a crossover there with
0:47 DS9 a little bit, but still Shadow Fleet
0:49 was pretty good. But what is the Dark
0:51 Fleet? We're going to give you those
0:52 definitions today. If you're new to the
0:53 channel, hey, take a moment, subscribe
0:55 to the channel, and hit the bell so be
0:56 alerted about new videos as they come
0:58 out. So the current operations by the
1:01 United States to seize tankers fleeing
1:03 from Venezuela carrying either
1:06 sanctioned cargo or in the case of Bella
1:09 1 here, the Marinara, which is a
1:11 sanctioned tanker. All these vessels
1:14 fall under the criteria of what we would
1:18 call a dark fleet vessel. But okay, S,
1:20 what does dark fleet mean? We're going
1:22 to reference a source which I think is
1:24 probably the best for defining this, and
1:26 that is Lloyd's list. Another friend of
1:28 the show, Michelle Whisbach, who used to
1:29 be at Lloyd's list, she's now over at
1:33 Winward, wrote this piece back in 2023,
1:35 the shifty shades of gray, the different
1:38 risk profiles of the dark fleet
1:40 explained. And I am going to use
1:42 Michelle's argument for this because I
1:45 think it's probably the best out there.
1:47 So, she identified four things that
1:49 identify a ship as a dark fleet. Number
1:52 one, the ship is typically 15 years or
1:55 older. Second, it has an offiscated
1:56 ownership. In other words, it's not
1:58 clear ownership. Now, I should note that
2:00 lots of times in shipping, we can't find
2:03 clear ownership. That is very gray area
2:05 sometimes. But in shadow fleet tankers,
2:08 dark fleet tankers, uh we see that a
2:10 lot. What we see is ships involved in
2:13 sanctioned oil trade largely from Iran,
2:15 Venezuela, and probably the most
2:18 frequent is Russia. And then fourth,
2:21 they engage in deceptive practices. is
2:23 what do I mean by deceptive practices?
2:26 They'll turn off their AIS transponder.
2:28 They'll go dark. Uh they will spoof.
2:30 They will use false identification.
2:33 They'll take the identity of a other
2:36 ship or a dead ship, a zombie. Now,
2:38 understanding a ship, ships have
2:40 registry, they have insurance, they have
2:44 classification. I did an entire ship 101
2:46 uh that that talked about that. So, I'll
2:47 reference that above if you want to go
2:49 see it. In the case of the Dark Fleet,
2:52 what Michelle did is rate them in
2:56 different categories of gray and and
2:58 that's the the analogy we'll use here.
2:59 So, the first one is kind of the
3:01 lightest shade of gray. So,
3:03 characteristics, uh, this is a class of
3:05 tankers that might be flagged with a
3:07 high quality open register. In other
3:09 words, they're using standard registries
3:11 perhaps Panama, Liberia, the Marshall
3:14 Islands, but the beneficial ownership is
3:16 unknown and the vessels are solely
3:19 deployed in the Russian oil trade. Now,
3:21 understand Russia came under sanctions
3:25 in 2022 and the way those sanctions were
3:28 in envisioned was that they would not be
3:32 able to carry oil above a set price cap.
3:34 Initially, that price cap was $60 for
3:38 crude oil, $100 for diesel fuel. And the
3:40 way that they enacted that or enforced
3:43 that sanction was to use the
3:46 international group of 12 PNI protection
3:49 indemnity clubs that cover 95% of the
3:52 global tanker trade not to insure those
3:55 vessels. Ships without insurance will
3:57 not be welcomed in other countries. Uh
3:58 they'll have issues with their registry.
4:00 They'll have issues with their
4:02 classification. Well, what we've seen
4:05 happen here is that ships will go to
4:08 that 5% that are not insuring under the
4:11 12 international PNI clubs and get
4:13 insurance. And that is the kind of the
4:15 lightest shades of gray ships we see.
4:17 Then we have the ships that are gray.
4:19 Now, these are tankers usually, but not
4:20 always. They're flagged with regular
4:24 open registries and in some cases remain
4:26 entered with the PNI clubs, but they
4:29 have irregularities in their AIS. Uh
4:31 this is accompanied by extended periods
4:33 in international waters in areas known
4:37 for shipto- ship transfers of US
4:39 sanctioned either Venezuelan, Iranian or
4:42 Russian oil. You see these in areas off
4:45 West Africa, Southeast Malaysia, uh off
4:48 the coast of Spain and Greece. This is
4:49 what we mean by a shipto- ship transfer.
4:52 Ships come alongside other ships out in
4:53 the open water, usually outside of
4:56 territorial waters. They'll put these
4:57 fenders over the side and they will
5:00 conduct a transfer of fuel from one
5:03 vessel to another. This prevents the
5:05 tanker carrying the sanctioned fuel or
5:08 the sanctioned tanker from going into
5:10 territorial waters of a nation. Plus,
5:14 the sanctioned oil may be hidden in its
5:16 origin so that companies or groups buy
5:19 the oil and don't realize they're buying
5:21 sanctioned oil. This is what a company
5:24 like Tanker Trackers does to identify
5:27 that. So that if you're an oil broker or
5:29 a purchaser of oil, you are not buying
5:32 sanctioned oil. The problem with these
5:34 shipto- ship transfers is you can have
5:36 oil spills. You can have there's really
5:39 no preventive measure here to contain
5:41 any sort of oil spill. There's no booms
5:43 around the vessel. And if something
5:44 happens to the vessel, and we've seen
5:46 this happen, we had an explosion on
5:49 board a ship called the Pablo, which
5:50 literally peeled back the top of the
5:53 tanker, killed two people on board. Then
5:54 we have the dark gray fleet. These are
5:56 tankers that are flagged with high-risk
6:00 flag open registries. These are based on
6:02 lists published by nations under the
6:04 Paris Memorandum of Understanding.
6:07 They're on the gray and black list. So,
6:09 typically you'll identify countries and
6:11 countries that have issues so that other
6:14 countries know about it. This indicates
6:15 lower levels of technical and safety
6:17 management. The flags on the black and
6:20 gray list used by the dark fleet include
6:22 international registries. These include
6:25 Cameroon, Togo, Camaros, Tanzania, Biz,
6:28 Sierra Leone, Cook Island, St. Kit,
6:31 NeAs, and Palao. There's also frequent
6:33 unexplained gaps in their automatic
6:35 identification system signals, a history
6:38 of flag hopping, shifting registries,
6:40 and no known insurance. And these ships
6:43 are almost always operating in the oil
6:45 trade with Russia, Venezuela, and Iran.
6:47 I'll add there's some other countries
6:50 you add to that. Gana, Gambia, uh, uh,
6:53 Te-our least, and the dark gray fleet
6:55 are the ones that really you're seeing
6:57 right now being grabbed by the United
6:59 States. Then you have this
7:01 characteristic called dappel gray. Now,
7:02 these are various shades of risk
7:05 identified among a single fleet managed
7:08 by one ISM or a technical manager. Now,
7:10 these tankers may have differing degrees
7:13 of vessel behavior that fulfill the dark
7:15 fleet methodology while others trade
7:19 normally. So some within the fleet by
7:22 these uh ship managers will be okay but
7:24 others within the fleet may not. So just
7:25 because a ship comes from a certain
7:27 company it doesn't mean all the other
7:29 ships in the fleet are meeting their
7:31 requirements. And then finally we have
7:34 the black fleet. This is the highest
7:36 risk vessels. Uh they are checking all
7:38 the boxes of deceptive shipping
7:40 practices. This includes falsely
7:41 claiming to be flagged with
7:43 registrations as well as other
7:45 fraudulent representation of class
7:47 insurance alongside the usual flag
7:50 hopping, voyage irregularities, AIS
7:53 manipulation and spoofing. The ownership
7:54 and other technical management
7:56 structures are either unknown or overly
7:59 complex. There is no known insurance.
8:01 Tankers do not make any track port
8:03 calls. They're taking on cargos via
8:05 shipto- ship transfers in international
8:10 waters and their I AIS is switched off.
8:12 What you get with the dark fleet is a
8:15 fleet operating outside the norms of
8:18 normal shipping. It's like a car driving
8:19 down the road that doesn't have a
8:21 license plate. It's not insured and it
8:24 hasn't been inspected, but you can't
8:27 stop it until it pulls in somewhere to
8:29 inspect it. That's the problem. What
8:31 these ships are doing are operating on
8:34 the open notions without proper
8:36 registration, proper insurance and
8:38 proper classification. Classification is
8:40 that third party entity that comes in to
8:43 ensure everything else is being done.
8:45 What this means is a ship like the
8:47 Skipper, which was the first one seized
8:49 by the United States in the Venezuela
8:51 operation, that ship was carrying 1.8
8:54 million barrels of fuel. If that ship
8:56 has an oil spill, its registry, which
8:59 didn't exist, is not responsible. It has
9:02 no insurance. There's no classification
9:04 entity that's ensuring it's meeting
9:05 those inspections that would have
9:07 prevented the oil spill. And wherever
9:09 that oil spills, guess what? You are the
9:11 recipient of not just that oil, but the
9:14 cleanup for it. This is the danger of
9:15 the dark fleet. The dark fleet, the
9:17 shadow fleet, the parallel fleet
9:19 operates outside the bounds of
9:22 traditional shipping. The problem is
9:24 once you go beyond 12 miles, it's the
9:26 wild wild west out there, kids. And
9:28 that's what we're seeing happening right
9:29 now. I hope you enjoyed today's episode
9:31 of Shipping 101. If you did, hey, take a
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