At the end of August, the Stavros, a tanker owned by a large Greek shipping family, is loading 53,000 tonnes of coal from a Russian Black Sea port, Bloomberg reveals. On September 5, he reached the port of Iskenderun, in southern Turkey. This is not an exceptional case.
According to shipping news portal Lloyd’s List Intelligence, of the 204 ships leaving Russian ports in May, 79 were Greek-owned. Off the Gulf of Laconia, in the southern Peloponnese, for months, transhipment operations on the open sea, allowing oil to be transferred in international waters from a Russian boat to another European, have been carried out.
According to the Japanese daily Nikkei, in the first six months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, 41 ships were involved in such activities off Greece. The year before, there was only one. Until now, the Greek fleet was among the largest carriers of Russian oil, and the war in Ukraine did not interrupt their activity, which angered Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. “We see Greek companies providing a large fleet of tankers to transport Russian oil. I’m sure it’s not in the interests of Europe, Greece or Ukraine. We need to be more united so that Russia is forced to seek peaceful solutions”he said in July.
21% of global capacity
If it was until now legal to carry out these transshipment operations and to transport Russian oil outside the European Union, such as to India, China or Turkey, this will no longer be the case from Monday, December 5, with the implementation of European sanctions.
The world’s leading maritime power in terms of merchant ships, Greek shipowners own 5,895 ships, or about 21% of global capacity, and even up to 40% of tankers transporting oil worldwide. Fearing that European sanctions will lead to a migration of activities to countries that do not apply these same regulations, the powerful lobby of Greek shipowners has been raising its voice for several months.
“Instead of punishing Russia, we are punishing ourselves. Russia also sells its oil at a steep discount to China and India, which then resell their refined products to Europe at exorbitant prices! », was indignant Evangelos Marinakis, president of Capital Maritime & Trading Corp., in particular owner of several media and football clubs. For George Prokopiou, one of the most important shipowners in the country, “sanctions have never worked (…). The European Union shoots itself in the foot ».
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