Flags Of Convenience Going Undetected Is Becoming Harder and Harder

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A fun post tonight learning how technology is reshaping the world routing out the bad actors. I only got onto this topic tonight after finding out about a shadow fleet vessel being hijacked by pirates which made me chuckle and the post evolved from there.

Going undetected these days is getting harder and harder to achieve because AI is now scoring each vessel with a true false stamp. Sea Verity scores the intel from ships with a confidence score and turning off your transponders and appearing elsewhere is being tracked in real time. The shadow fleet has tripled in size since the first Ukraine conflict and according to Sea Verity stands at over 1900 vessels that go dark, but this technology keeps the lights on.

The shadow fleet also known as the "dark fleet" is the name of the vessels used by Russia, Iran and Venezuela to move their sanctioned crude oil. The shadow fleet comprises more than 1000 oil tankers with an average age of more than 20 years. This is the official number and Sea Verity has a number nearly twice this size and believe that number to be closer to the real number. If you turn off your transponder regularly which they track then you are up to no good. The structural lifespan of an oil tanker is 20 -25 years before they are scrapped due to the risk of technical and general maintenance failures increasing.

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A little ironic with a shadow fleet tanker being captured by pirates off the coast of Somalia yesterday. The registry states the name of the vessel as Siba 1 with the flag of convenience being Eritrea and is part of Iran's ghost fleet. Not only are they being hunted by the authorities but also subject to pirate attacks with this being the second shadow fleet tanker taken by pirates this year.

Over the last couple of years the US and the EU have been placing political pressure on countries that the shadow fleet has been using for registry. The registry is what gives the vessel an official identification via a flag state which gives the vessel authority for international trade. The registry of every vessel is international law which establishes the ownership of the vessel along with safety compliances.

The flags of convenience is when a country allows a vessel to register under their flag for other purposes like taxes and regulation manipulation. This is common practice with countries that are facing sanctions or have higher taxation.

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The shadow fleets goal is to avoid detection with the sole aim of delivering sanctioned goods without being caught or stopped. The common methods used are turning off the tracking transponders, changing the registration flags along with ship names and identity numbers plus transferring cargo to other ships whilst at sea.

Of the more than 1000 vessels in the shadow fleet more than 200 are now registered under the flag of Russia which has not been the case previously. The clamp down is working with countries like Cameroon last month cancelling 34 flags of convenience.

The top flags of the shadow fleet are Russia, Cameroon, Sierra Leone and Panama and now with the flags of convenience not being so easy to bypass Russia is now using it's own flag. Russia thought having these vessels sail under their flag the rest of the world would not intervene and that has not been the case. Ship owners thought by switching they would get Russian protection and that was not ending well when the Marinera vessel was seized by the US Coastguard between Iceland and Scotland in late March earlier this year. Only 2 vessels have moved their flags of convenience to Russia since so the flags of convenience from dodgy countries still remains the order of play and no expected Russian influx as first thought.

With AI now monitoring the shadow fleet and every vessel on the shipping registry database watching every move through shipping tracking apps going undetected is becoming impossible. Turning off the ships transponder once could be a technical issue, but twice or three times is a red flag and the data is collected and kept. Changing flags or ship names is only going to highlight how correct the data is which will highlight which countries are purchasing sanctioned Russian products which should trigger the next step of political pressure/sanctions on those countries.

Posted Using INLEO