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