Owners and operators of oil tankers: who earns on oil exports?
One of Russia’s key export commodities, oil, continues to be exported almost exclusively by foreign vessels. The share of Russian operators and ship owners, or foreign companies associated with them is insignificant. Having analyzed oil shipments from the country’s three major oil ports in June, IAA PortNews came to an interesting conclusion: foreigners still get the bulk of income from transport services in this segment.
PortNews has analyzed June shipments of oil from Russia’s three major oil ports: Primorsk, Novorossiysk and specialized oil seaport Kozmino (Primorsky Territory).
| In brief: oil shipments continue to be carried out by foreign ships, mostly under the management of foreign operators and owners including companies from ‘unfriendly’ countries. Out of 214 calls made by sea-going tankers in June, only 17 calls, or 7.9% of the total number, were identified as those of Russian owners. Kozmino port accounted for most of them - 22%, Novorossiysk – for 5%, Primorsk – for 6%. So, foreign ship owner still get the bulk of income from transportation of Russian oil. |
When analyzing the data, we took into account both the direct ownership by a Russian company and the ownership by foreign operators associated with a Russian company.
Primorsk
According to the vessel tracking data of Marine Traffic, 50 tankers called at Primorsk in June 2023. It is the nationality of the fleet operators that is indicative.
The calls of ships, operators of which are registered in Greece amounted to 23, UAE - 9, India - 5, Singapore - 3, Turkey, Liberia, Hong Kong – 2 each, Marshall Islands, Panama, Cyprus, Moldova and Gabon - 1 each.
Only three of them were identified by us as ships run by operators associated with Russian companies.
Novorossiysk
The port of Novorossiysk welcomed 127 tankers in June.
Their operators are registered in the following countries: Greece - 54 ships, UAE and Turkey – 15 each, Liberia – 9, Panama – 7, Singapore – 5, Croatia and Italy – 4 each, Germany – 3, India, Hong Kong and Spain – 2 each, Lebanon, Gabon, Vietnam, Latvia and Russia – 1 each.
Out of that number, 6 calls were identified as run by operators associated with Russian companies.
As can be seen, quite a number of operators are registered in ‘unfriendly’ jurisdictions.
Kozmino
In June, 37 tankers called at the port of Kozmino.
The calls per operators’ registration look as follows: UAE – 9, China – 8, Hong Kong, India and Liberia – 4 each, Turkey, Norway Cyprus, Panama, Cameroon and Russia – 1 each.
8 calls of that number were identified as run by operators associated with Russian companies.
There is a variety of countries
So, in June 2023 the three largest oil ports serviced a total of 214 ship calls with only 17 of them (7.9% of the total number) identified as calls of ships run by Russian ship owners. The port of Kozmino accounted for most of them - 22%, Novorossiysk – for 5%, Primorsk – for 6%. Thus, over 90% of calls are made by ships of foreign ship owners, so their profit from oil transportation services is the largest.
In terms of the operators’ registration, the situation is as follows: 77 calls were made by ships with operators registered in Greece, 33 – UAE, 19 – Turkey, 15 – Liberia, 11 – India, 16 – China and Hong Kong together. Russian port were also actively visited by tankers operated by companies registered in ‘unfriendly’ jurisdictions (Germany, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Norway and others, with Greece holding a particular place).
According to Vyacheslav Mishchenko, Head of the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies for the Development of the Fuel and Energy Complex at Gubkin University, “there are quite a lot of different carriers that ship Russian oil from ports and most of them are not Russian ... The volume of Russian oil exported to various directions has not dropped much... the fleet involved copes well, which is confirmed by various statistical data on the growth of deliveries to the market of India, China and other countries."
