Increasingly more oil tankers from the so-called “ghost fleet” used by Russia to evade international sanctions have exhausted their resources (engine lifespan, etc. – ed.) and need to be replaced. The ships in this fleet that are no longer operational will be sold as scrap metal, reports Moscow Times.
The “average age” of the ships currently making up this fleet is 20 years. 60% of these ships are over 20 years old, according to S&P Global, quoted by the Russian publication.
“Because the small companies that own them on paper most likely do not have the resources to acquire new and shiny ships, even if they wanted to, this means that these ships are at the end of the road,” Elizabeth Brough, analyst at the Atlantic Council, told Politico.
The ships in Russia’s ghost fleet were already at the “end of resources” when they began to be intensively used to illegally transport oil and petroleum products, as a measure to circumvent international sanctions imposed on Moscow after the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
Details, HERE