Last May, a sunken tanker dropped anchor 2 nautical miles off the coast of Denmark, with Russian oil sloshing in the hold, after the ship was grounded for six hours due to engine failure.
Built in 2005, Canis Power was long past its prime and the incident was seen as a warning sign in the shipping industry. As with other shadow vessels carrying Russian oil, the owner of this elderly tanker was unknown. If the incident had resulted in a collision or a spillage of 300,000 barrels of oil on board, no one would have been able to tell who was to be billed for it.
Since December 2022, when the West imposed the first restrictions on Russian oil exports, Moscow has built a fleet of more than 400 vessels that transports about 4 million barrels of oil a day outside the reach of sanctions and earns billions of dollars a year in additional revenue to finance the war in Ukraine.
Shadow tankers transporting Russian oil cross European seas, including the Baltic and Mediterranean, several times a day. There are already several incidents involving them and a bigger disaster is only a matter of time.
Source: www.aripaev.ee
