Three tankers carrying Sokol crude oil, previously stranded at sea after Western sanctions made shipping Russian oil more difficult, are now on the move again towards China and India, data from Kpler and the London Stock Exchange Group showed on Monday.
The backlog of tankers carrying Russian Sokol oil has become one of the biggest disruptions to Moscow’s oil trade since sanctions from the West, imposed after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, came into force.
According to Reuters, more than ten million barrels of Sokol have been floating in seaborne storage over the past three months.
Payment complications and the impact of price caps from the West have slowed trade for Russian shipping companies and their vessels carrying the oil.
At the end of November last year, three major Greek shipping companies announced their exit from the Russian oil trade in a bid to avoid sanctions. Prior to this, all three companies – Minerva Marine, Thenamaris and TMS Tankers – were actively moving Russian crude and oil products from Europe to the rest of the world.