Insurer Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty (AGCS) produces a marine casualty count each year and takes a close look at the main safety concerns for the shipping industry.
Its regular reports cover issues such as the rise in fire-related casualties that are familiar themes to accident watchers in the maritime sector.
But now casualties involving what AGCS describes as the “shadow fleet” are starting to figure more prominently in its Safety and Shipping Review 2023 report.
AGCS records eight accidents in 2022 involving ships operating in trades that are affected by international sanctions.
That is more than the past three years combined and, with increased sanctions against Russia this year expanding the dark fleet, that casualty figure might well be expected to increase.
As AGCS pointed out this year, the 96,700-dwt Pablo (built 1997) accident off Malaysia, involving a catastrophic explosion, showed that the shipping industry could be edging towards a major pollution incident involving the shadow fleet.
The increase in accidents should not really come as a surprise given that the fleet of tankers in the dark trades is estimated to have already grown to as many as 600 ships.
AGCS quotes estimates from TankerTrackers that suggest about 20% of the large tanker fleet is operating in transporting oil for Venezuela, North Korea and “increasingly Russia”.
Justus Heinrich, global product leader at marine hull at AGCS, said: “The increase in the number of shadow tankers is a worrying development, threatening the world fleet and the environment.”
While the more routine safety issues that AGCS reports on are to some extent controllable through shipping’s existing safety network, the dark fleet has been largely ostracised from that support system.
It includes ships that, because of sanctions, cannot access mainstream ship classification or technical ship-management services, or register with flag states that require strict adherence to the main international safety conventions.
Many of the dark fleet tankers are also operating without recognised insurance cover.
Compensation bill
If there is a major oil spill involving an uninsured tanker, or with an insurer that will not pay up, it is likely that the International Oil Pollution Compensation Funds (IOPC Funds) will have to pay the pollution compensation bill.
The IOPC Funds collects a levy from oil exports that contributes to an oil pollution compensation fund intended to pay for tanker pollution costs above a shipowner’s limitation.
In effect, this intergovernmental organisation, which is a part of the International Maritime Organization, is underwriting a fleet of old and substandard tankers over which it cannot enforce any safety controls.
IOPC Funds director Gaute Sivertsen expressed concern at its annual meeting in May over the large number of tankers conducting unsafe operations with little or no insurance.
He said it put IOPC Funds member states, which contribute to the organisation’s oil pollution compensation fund, at risk “without having the means to mitigate that risk”.
There are some indications that port states at least are starting to focus inspections on tankers.
As TradeWinds reported earlier this year, Singapore has detained 33 tankers in the first half of 2023, according to figures from the Tokyo MOU on Port State Control, as it increases the frequency of inspections.
China has detained more than 30 tankers this year for failing port state control inspections as an increasing number of ageing tankers discharge oil in the Far East nation.
At least 10 of these ships were flagged in countries suspected of being linked to the dark fleet, such as Gabon, Cameroon, Palau and Djibouti.
Stricter compliance and safety standard enforcement, such as that being demonstrated by some port states, is critical to prevent the shadow fleet from becoming the main headline in next year’s AGCS casualty report.
