STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
We're going to look a little more closely at Russian oil and the ships on which that oil travels. The Trump administration, as we have been reporting, has placed new sanctions on two of Russia's largest oil companies over the war in Ukraine. Russia's oil exports have been the target of western sanctions for years, and yet millions of gallons of Russian oil float to India and China, among other places, aboard rickety old tankers. Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi and Daniel Ackerman from NPR's Planet Money have more.
DANIEL ACKERMAN, BYLINE: Bjarne Caesar Skinnerup works as a maritime pilot in the straits of Denmark.
BJARNE CAESAR SKINNERUP: My job is to bring ships through dangerous waters.
ALEXI HOROWITZ-GHAZI, BYLINE: These shallow waters are full of bridges, ports and boat traffic, but Bjarne knows them like the back of his hand.
ACKERMAN: So his job as a pilot is to climb aboard passing ships, like giant oil tankers, and help them safely navigate the straits.
SKINNERUP: We are just a little cog in the big machine of the global economy.
HOROWITZ-GHAZI: For most of Bjarne's career, the vessels he piloted were relatively new. But a couple years ago, he noticed a different kind of oil tanker passing through. These were older and rustier. He noticed they were flying unfamiliar flags. And they listed insurance companies that he wasn't sure even existed.
ACKERMAN: Bjarne says these ships are part of what's now known as the shadow fleet.
HOROWITZ-GHAZI: Shadow vessels are not new. Countries like North Korea and Iran have long used them to move contraband. But it wasn't widespread until 2022. Maritime analyst Michelle Wiese Bockmann says that is when western countries started sanctioning Russian oil.
ACKERMAN: But Russia quickly found a way to flout those sanctions.
HOROWITZ-GHAZI: So how do you build a shadow fleet?
MICHELLE WIESE BOCKMANN: Well, you spend $15 billion.
HOROWITZ-GHAZI: Oil exporters acquired hundreds of old tankers destined for the scrapyard, outfitting them with fake insurance documents and shady registration.
BOCKMANN: Their owners are hidden behind Byzantine layer upon layer upon layer of special purpose vehicles across Mauritius, Seychelles, Marshall Islands, the United Arab Emirates, India, et cetera. So good luck finding an owner.
ACKERMAN: At sea, these ships can go to great lengths to hide their tracks. They might broadcast fake location data or transfer their oil from one ship to another to confuse observers.
BOCKMANN: So it's all part of a cat and mouse game that's being played in these waters.
HOROWITZ-GHAZI: A game that's been enabled by buyers like China and India that never signed onto the sanctions.
ACKERMAN: Meanwhile, if western countries try to stop these ships, it could risk a military confrontation with Russia. So the shadow fleet has kept growing. Michelle says 1 in every 6 oil tankers on Earth is now part of it.
HOROWITZ-GHAZI: And Danish maritime pilot Bjarne Skinnerup is torn about his role in all this. He knows that if he lets these shadow ships pass through the straits of Denmark without an expert guide, it could mean a devastating oil spill.
SKINNERUP: If we have something like that, it'll be terrible. And there will be no one to pay them other than the Danish taxpayers because if they don't have an insurance, who's going to pay?
ACKERMAN: But Bjarne also knows that every shadow vessel he pilots toward its payday could mean more money for the Russian war machine.
SKINNERUP: It's just this contradiction that when I do a good job, I make sure that there are more artillery grenades, more drones, more killing in Ukraine. It is actually a little bit emotional because I cannot see what an ordinary Danish maritime pilot can do.
HOROWITZ-GHAZI: He can either keep the Danish coastline clean or his conscience, but he can't quite do both.
Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi.
ACKERMAN: Daniel Ackerman, NPR News.
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