A veteran Seychelles-owned VLCC is said to have loaded two Russian oil cargoes from shadow fleet suezmaxes as ship transfers resumed off the Spanish enclave of Ceuta.
After more than a year of inactivity at the lightering zone off the African coast, oil analytics company Kpler tracked two Russian ship-to-ship transfer operations involving the 301,000-dwt Atila (built 2003).
The Cameroon-flagged tanker took 1m barrels of Urals crude from each of the 159,000-dwt Sakarya (built 2011) and 158,000-dwt Cankiri (built 2008), controlled by Hong Kong’s Prominent Shipmanagement.
The larger vessel is most likely now headed to eastern Asia, Kpler said.
AIS data showed the ship heading south off the west coast of Africa on Friday.
It is due at Cape Town in South Africa on 29 November, presumably for bunkering
Ceuta was a popular spot for the transfer of Russian oil after the invasion of Ukraine.
But Kpler had not tracked any such activity since a crackdown by Spanish authorities in August 2023.
The Atila is listed by shipping databases as owned and managed by Grat Shipping of the Seychelles since June 2022.
ISM management has been provided by Meridian Navi Shipmanagement of Kazakhstan since May this year.
Neither company could be contacted.
The tanker is Grat’s only listed vessel.
Insurers unknown
Its insurer is unknown, but it is classed in Russia.
The ship has a clean port state control detention record.
The Atila, built in Japan and assessed as worth $31m by VesselsValue, is the former Iwatesan, sold by Mitsui OSK Lines of Japan in 2021 to Greek owner Monte Nero Maritime.
It was renamed the Hikari and then sold to Grat the following year.
The suezmaxes had loaded Russian oil in Primorsk and Novorossiysk in Russia.
They are now returning to Murmansk in Russia.
Both vessels sail under the Panama flag. Their insurers are not known.
Prominent Shipmanagement was founded in 2022, its website says.
Waters off Greece have also been a popular transshipment location, but Greek naval exercises have disrupted this practice.
