The imposition of a 25% tariff on products from countries that buy Venezuelan oil will give new impetus to the growing anomie that already dominates international trade, one of whose manifestations is the thriving dark fleet of tankers, the same one that travels the oceans without insurance coverage, dodging satellite systems and mocking the stowaways with such rudimentary hiding places as covering the names of their vessels with nylon tarps.
The lucrative and illegally permitted sanctions market has fueled piracy among oil privateers, skilled at transferring oil from one ship to another, seeking to conceal their origins and destinations and thus avoid the illegal penalties invented by the United States and European Union countries to seize the resources of Venezuela, Russia, and Iran, among others.
And if currently, without the application of the 25% tariff on countries that buy Venezuelan oil, PDVSA has been forced to use the dark fleet to export around half of its oil, starting next April 2, more barrels will leave the terminals of Puerto La Cruz and Lake Maracaibo under the names of Boscán, Merey16 or Hamaca, to finally arrive at the destination ports without passport numbers or identity cards.
That is, as the number and type of sanctions grow, the current legal framework is fading, giving way to the search for alternative ways to negotiate oil, heeding the invisible hand of the market, which knows how to take advantage of the lawlessness imposed by the US and the EU to disrupt international trade rules.
Windward's glossary on windward.ai defines the dark fleet as tankers that disable their automatic identification systems (AIS), which allow their locations to be determined, and send out deceptive signals by manipulating the global navigation satellite system (GNSS).
“The dark fleet is characterized by weak ownership structures and the use of multiple flags of convenience for short periods of time. The size of this fleet has fluctuated substantially with each new regulation, even more so after the ban on Russian oil and price caps,” he says.
According to Euronews.com, the so-called "ghost fleet" consists of old oil tankers purchased secondhand, often by opaque entities based in countries not subject to sanctions, such as the United Arab Emirates or the Marshall Islands, and registered in places like Gabon or the Cook Islands.
Windward has identified approximately 1.100 vessels in the dark fleet. It notes that while the practice has existed for years, with a strong presence in trade with Iran and Venezuela, its presence has grown since the Russian special operation in Ukraine, as it allows Russia to avoid sanctions. According to CNN estimates, more than 10% of large oil tankers are involved in this illegal practice, and the numbers are constantly increasing.
Trump's 25% tariff on nations buying Venezuelan oil will provide a significant boost and add new and old tankers to the dark fleet. Currently, Tankertrackers.com estimates that there are 211 vessels in the dark fleet transporting oil from Venezuela and Iran. The American think tank, the Atlantic Council, estimates that around 17% of all Russian tankers are part of this fleet, which also includes other merchant vessels.
But since the political and philosophical principle of the United States is that it has no friends, only interests, and Trump's ethical standard is that "any business that profits an American company will make America great again," the Secretary of the Treasury of that country treats the companies that make up this buccaneer market with such care and delicacy that only a third of the tankers in the dark fleet that sails the oceans have been included on the blacklist of this US agency, in charge of applying sanctions, and of these only a third fly the Iranian flag.
That is, the US applies sanctions that force sanctioned countries to use tankers that circumvent the sanctions, but is lenient and allows the vast majority of ghost shipping companies to work with the dark fleet, which reveals an indication of the number of US companies involved in this underworld and indicates the volume of money moving in the sanctions industry.
And no matter how many sanctions they impose or attempt to impose on companies that do business with the dark fleet of tankers, like dried leather, with each sanction some new form of transaction, business, or oil transport emerges, capable of evading the most sophisticated detention methods.
In fact, they put so much effort into trying to locate tankers using sophisticated technological methods that some pirate vessels manage to evade or conceal their origins and destinations by using methods as basic and crude as camouflaging their names to avoid detection when they arrive at a terminal. Let's watch this conversation between a Dark Fleet ship captain and an onboard technician, captured by the Tankertrackers.com channel:
Dark Fleet Tanker Owner: "Did They Hide Their Name Before Arriving in Venezuela?"
Dark Fleet Tanker Captain: Yes, sir. Just as you requested. We've got it covered with nylon tarpaulin. Cover every letter, sir!
Owner: Good, good, continue.
