In their latest report, Windward finds that 64% of all medium and high-risk vessels in Q3 have been flagged for being associated with Russia.
The Windward Q3 Risk Report analyzes the behaviour of tankers and cargo vessels from the world fleet, and takes a close look at those specifically associated with sanctioned regimes, in the context of sanctions compliance and deceptive shipping practices, such as dark activities, ship-to-ship (STS) operations and location (GNSS) manipulations.
Russia risk regime
According to Windward, when comparing the overall number of direct voyages from Q3 2022 to Q3 2023, it’s clear that the volume of Russian oil being directly exported from Russia stayed more or less the same throughout the war and the developing sanctions.
- European Union and United Kingdom
In Q2 2023, the average number of direct Russian oil exports was 32. This number dropped by 18% during Q3 2023. It seems like the volume of Russian oil to USA/EU/UK is continuously dropping, but has not yet completely stopped, even with the advanced sanctions posed.
- Middle East and India
While Q2 2023 showed an increase in direct exports, Q3 marked a decrease to both destinations – a 14% and 10% decrease to the Middle East and India respectively.
- Latin America
Q3 marked a new all-time high of direct export voyages to LATAM with a 30% increase. This is interesting, as we identified this continuous increase coming from one specific country – Brazil. Since the beginning of 2023, the number of direct voyages of Russian oil to Brazil has increased by 186%.
- Tanker Voyages through the Bering Straits
In Q3 2023, an interesting trend emerged of both crude oil and oil products tankers leaving Russia through the Bering Straits, to China. While the passage through Bering is clearly subject to seasonality, when comparing Q3 2022 to Q3 2023, there is an increase of 50% in Straits passages by tankers coming from Russia.
In addition to the overall traffic increase in the area, in 2022 there was only one such voyage from Russia to China through the Bering Straits. In Q3 of 2023 there were 10 – an increase of 900%.
