Off the coast of the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, on the African side of the Strait of Gibraltar, ship-to-ship transfers of Russian oil have resumed. Spanish authorities previously believed he had been detained.
Bloomberg reports on the resumption of Russian oil transshipment off the coast of Ceuta. The agency reports that the oil tanker Sakarya with cargo from the Baltic Primorsk entered the territorial waters of the Spanish enclave. After this, the ship turned off the data transmitter and its actions were not visible on satellite images due to cloud cover.
However, as the agency writes, the ship left Spanish territorial waters, turning on the transponder and indicating that the draft had increased, that is, 730 thousand barrels had been unloaded.
The tanker Cankiri could have carried out a similar operation. It arrived with a shipment of 1.2 million barrels from Novorossiysk.
According to the ships’ AIS data, both tankers are already heading to Murmansk, where they are expected to arrive on November 18 and 23.
Ceuta’s territorial waters have become a popular transshipment point for Russian oil since December 2022, when the EU banned imports of Russian oil and, together with the G7, set a price limit for third countries at $60 per barrel.
The Spanish authorities were forced to respond to the evasion of sanctions right under their noses.
“Since August 2023, no transfers from the Urals have been carried out in the Ceuta area, as the Spanish authorities warned local companies about possible violations of the maximum price.” —Bloomberg writes.
Western countries are trying to combat the fact that Russian companies are evading sanctions, and since July 2023, Russian oil has been sold above the maximum price. But so far its influence is limited.
This is also influenced by the fact that, for example, in the Mediterranean Sea there are enough other places for the transshipment of Russian oil. For example, this is also done near Ceuta, off the coast of Morocco, but they are already neutral international waters. According to AIS, the tanker Habrut, which can carry around 2 million barrels at a time, is in the area this week.
Previously, the authorities of the EU countries tried to influence the transshipment of Russian oil to other areas of the Mediterranean Sea. For example, the Greek army began constant exercises and closed one of the bays of Greece, where they were actively refueling oil and oil products. Operations in that area almost ceased, but were moved to another part of the Mediterranean.
Obviously, most of the time tankers try to use bays and territorial waters due to storms, which can complicate the transfer of oil from one tanker to another.
