Aerial view of a ship at sea.
Suriyapong Thongsawang | Moment | Getty Images
Oil-linked shipping costs rallied after last week’s announcement of tighter U.S. sanctions to drain Russia’s war coffers, in a move that poses significant threats to Moscow’s maritime distribution chains.
On Jan. 10, the U.S. Treasury Department announced fresh measures to deplete Russia’s energy revenues, including sanctions against key producers Gazprom Neft and Surgutneftegas, along with 183 vessels that were “largely oil tankers that are part of the shadow fleet as well as oil tankers owned by Russia-based fleet operators.”
The Treasury added that several of the designated tankers had transported both Russian and Iranian oil, and further extended sanctions to Russia-based maritime insurance providers Ingosstrakh Insurance Company and AlfaStrakhovanie Group.
This is set to deliver a critical blow to Russia, which has been forced to reroute its crude and oil product supplies to Asia-Pacific, after these volumes were banned by European and G7 sanctions, which came in effect in December 2022 and February 2023, respectively.
Already, around 890 unique tankers loaded Russian oil — comprising both crude and oil products — in the past six months, analytics firm Vortexa told CNBC on Jan. 7, with 107 of these ships — or 12% of the total — being subject to vessel-specific sanctions at the time.
The figures do not factor in the Jan. 10 announcement. On Wednesday, the Paris-based International Energy Agency assessed that around 160 out of the 183 blocked tankers had moved over 1.6 million barrels per day of Russian oil last year, accounting for 22% of Russian seaborne exports over the period.
The latest U.S. measures are also set to tighten the number of vessels available for the commission of non-Russian parties, pushing up shipping costs for other tankers. Since the Jan. 10 announcement, the effect of the bans has spilled into freight derivatives, with the volume of traded Forward Freight Agreement (FFA) contracts — which can allow traders to hedge against volatility in fluctuating freight rates – jumping to 11,412 on Jan. 10, and topping 7,900 and 6,700 on Jan. 13 and Jan. 14, respectively, according to data from the Baltic Exchange. The figures compare with 2,987 and 1,683 contracts traded daily on average in the months of November and December, respectively.
Rates for supertankers crossing from the Middle East Gulf to Asia-Pacific — a bellwether route for the oil industry — picked up by more than 40% between Jan. 9 and Jan. 14, according to pricing data from Argus Media.
As a result, the sanctions “could significantly disrupt Russian oil supply and distribution chains,” the IEA warned, noting that Russian exports will “take a hit from the shadow tanker fleet reduction” and the “elimination of shipping insurance, the bridling of dominant traders of Russian oil and designation of key handling companies in consumer markets.”
The agency nevertheless fell short of factoring the latest U.S. steps into its Russian supply forecasts, while noting that crude exports from the Eastern European country – a key member of the OPEC+ alliance – fell by 250,000 barrels per day month-on-month to 4.6 million barrels per day in December.