Reuters: Six Unfinished Russian Tankers Hit With US sanctions

This is the first time Washington has imposed sanctions on tankers before they set sail.

Six Russian oil tankers currently under construction at the Russian Zvezda shipyard have been hit with sanctions by the US authorities.

This was reported by Reuters on January 17.

According to the agency, this is the first time that Washington has imposed sanctions on Russian tankers before they set sail, much less before they began transporting sanctioned cargo.

As Reuters notes, new US sanctions against Russia, introduced last week, have caused a jump in oil prices and an increase in the cost of tanker shipping, as the outgoing Biden administration has taken a number of steps to hurt Russian oil exports and thwart Moscow's efforts to build its own fleet for such a purpose.

The publication's review of sanctions showed that six tankers under construction at the Zvezda shipyard were among the 183 vessels hit. They included Nursultan Nazarbayev, Alexander Beggrov, Alexey Bogolyubov and three unnamed vessels — Zvezda 131080, Zvezda 131060, and Zvezda 131040.

According to the text of the US sanctions, the buyer of Alexander Beggrov and Alexey Bogolyubov is Russia's Sovcomflot, and the buyer of the other four is Rosnefteflot, the shipping division of Rosneft. Both companies are also under US sanctions, the publication reports.

The new sanctions target the so-called “shadow fleet” that Russia uses to circumvent the $60-per-barrel price cap set by the G7 (Group of Seven) countries at the end of 2022, Reuters reports.

The agency’s oil industry source said that keeping vessels still under construction under sanctions could make it harder for Russia to justify the cost of completing them.

A Reuters study of shipping data showed that Russia will face a shortage of tankers to export oil after the sanctions were imposed, as more than 60% of tankers on the list have called at Russian ports in the past two months.

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