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The Chinese port of Longkou, located in Shandong Province, has received the first tanker named on the list of vessels sanctioned by the United States on Jan. 10. According to a report by the British shipping journal Lloyd's List, the Panamanian-flagged tanker Mermar spent four days off the province’s coast before entering the port on Jan. 15 to deliver its cargo: Russian oil.
Mermar and other blacklisted tankers had previously been unable to deliver their cargo, as Shandong Port Group, the state-owned company managing ports in the province, prohibited them from docking. However, according to Lloyd's List, the situation changed after the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) permitted vessels that had taken on cargo before Jan. 10 to complete operations required for unloading. The deadline for completing these operations has been set for Feb. 27.
Lloyd's List reports that nine sanctioned tankers were anchored off Shandong, with at least three — Mermar, Olia, and Huihai Pacific — appearing to be loaded, based on their drafts. All three vessels had departed from the port of Kozmino in Russia’s Primorsky Krai and carried a combined total of more than 2 million barrels of oil bound for China.
On Jan. 10, the U.S. Treasury imposed sanctions on 183 vessels transporting Russian oil — accounting for roughly 10% of the global oil tanker fleet — in a move aimed at cutting off the revenues Moscow uses to fund its war in Ukraine. Since the Western imposition of a $60 per barrel price cap on Russian crude in December 2022, Moscow has used its so-called “shadow fleet” of tankers to transport oil in circumvention of sanctions. The vessels that make up this fleet are often poorly maintained and frequently lack proper insurance.
Sanctions have also targeted insurance companies, representatives of oil refineries, and major Russian oil producers, including Gazprom Neft, Surgutneftegaz, RusGazAlliance, and Gazprom Shelf Project.
At least 65 oil tankers dropped anchor following the round of restrictions introduced on Jan. 10, with at least five tankers having stopped near China and seven near Singapore, with the rest anchored off Russia's coast in the Baltic Sea and in the Far East, according to a report by Reuters.
A separate Reuters report, citing analysis by Lloyd’s List, indicated that the latest U.S. measures mean that approximately 35% of the 669 “shadow fleet” tankers used for transporting Russian, Venezuelan, and Iranian oil have now been sanctioned by the U.S., Britain, or the European Union.