“We’re seeing a spike in Russian tankers turning off transmissions deliberately to circumvent sanctions,” Windward CEO Ami Daniel said in an interview with CNN, referring to oil import sanctions imposed by the U.S., U.K. and other countries. “The Russian fleet is starting to hide its whereabouts and its exports,” he added.
During the week of Mar. 12, there was 33 occurrences of dark activity by Russian oil tankers, according to Windward A.I. intelligence—a 236% jump from the same week a year ago.
Analysts say that refineries in China and India are buying up some of the Russian oil products. According to CNBC, there has been a “significant uptick” in Russian oil deliveries to New Delhi, and China is also being lured by the oil traded at a deep discount.
Russian Urals, the benchmark for Russian crude oil, is trading at an alluring $30 a barrel discount to Brent, the European benchmark. But despite the cheap prices, many Western traders have avoided buying Russian oil. “Russia’s oil has effectively become toxic,” one banker previously told the FT.
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Article URL : https://fortune.com/2022/03/30/russian-oil-tankers-vanish-from-tracking-systems-ukraine-sanctions/