Dark Fleet
E1. Maritime security, geopolitics and riskDefinition
Ships obscuring identity or ownership to evade sanctions, also called shadow fleet.
The dark fleet, also called the shadow fleet, is the body of tankers and other ships that obscure ownership, insurance, or movement to carry sanctioned cargoes, notably Russian, Iranian, and Venezuelan crude after the 2022 G7 price-cap measures. Tactics include AIS gaps, identity spoofing, flag-hopping to opaque registries, ship-to-ship transfers in unmonitored waters, and cover outside the International Group of P&I Clubs. Estimates put the fleet at several hundred aging tankers, raising pollution and casualty risk because of degraded class and insurance.