Gabon, a small Central African nation on the Atlantic coast, was last year’s fastest-growing shipping registry. In the opening days of 2024, its growth has been phenomenal thanks to a massive reflagging operation conducted by Russia’s top shipping concern, Sovcomflot.
Last year, the Gabon flag grew by 130.6%, according to data from Clarksons Research. The registry has won enormous amounts of tonnage in the close to two years since Russia invaded Ukraine becoming the number one flag for Russia’s dark fleet.
The flag of Gabon is a tricolour consisting of three horizontal green, yellow and blue bands, the latter representing the sea, specifically the South Atlantic Ocean.
Craig Kennedy, who authors the Navigating Russia substack, has charted the swift reflagging operation underway this year of some 50 Sovcomflot (SCF) tankers that have been ejected from the Liberian registry.
As of January 11, some 46 SCF tankers previously registered in Liberia have been reflagged en masse in Gabon, according to Navigating Russia. More are likely to follow suit in the coming days.
“We may also see other non-SCF shadow tankers reflagging away from Liberia and the Marshall Islands in the coming weeks,” Kennedy predicted in the latest issue of Navigating Russia. Both registries of the Marshall Islands and Liberia are headquartered in the US and have come under pressure from the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the US Department of the Treasury in Washington DC.
Among the ships on Gabon’s books was the Pablo, a 1997-built aframax that exploded in Malaysian waters killing three crewmembers in May last year. The destroyed, uninsured ship, with a history of hauling Iranian oil, was one of the shipping images of 2023, a stark reminder of the risks associated with the dark tanker fleet.
The latest data from brokers BRS suggests there are a total of 675 tankers in what it terms as the grey fleet, representing 7.4% of the total global tanker fleet.
This as been going on for decades.in the 1950s when I was a Merchant Seaman.
It was the demise of the Merchant Navy due to what was labeled phoney flag companies.
Monrovia was the flag at that time, Seaman’s
Working conditions and regulations went by the board.
Companies will always find the cheapest way, to trade .