Published: 13th January 2025
In one of its final acts, the Biden administration announced the most aggressive round of shipping sanctions in years on Friday, January 10 targeting more than 180 vessels and dozens of entities and individuals involved in Russian oil and gas trades and production, including oil traders, insurance companies and energy officials.
The unprecedented move by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (Ofac) was accompanied by a determination expanding the US’ targeting scope by authorising sanctions against “any persons determined to operate or have operated” in Russia’s energy sector. A similar determination was made in October regarding Iran.
“This action builds on, and strengthens, our focus since the beginning of the war on disrupting the Kremlin’s energy revenues, including through the G7+ price cap launched in 2022,” said Treasury secretary Janet Yellen.
“With today’s actions, we are ratcheting up the sanctions risk associated with Russia’s oil trade, including shipping and financial facilitation in support of Russia’s oil exports.”
The US sanctions targeted 183 vessels, 155 of which were “tankers that are part of the shadow fleet as well as oil tankers owned by Russia-based fleet operators”, the treasury said. Several also had a history of shipping Iranian oil.
The latest Ofac sanctions follow similar actions by the EU and the UK in December. They present not just significant trading challenges for those operating the fleet of vessels shipping Russian energy exports, but also to sanctions compliance professionals managing risk against an increasingly complex landscape across multiple jurisdictions.
“Having access to real time maritime data to pro-actively identify risks such as shadow fleet activity, spoofing, dark STS transfers and other AIS anomalies is no longer optional,” explained Lloyd’s List Intelligence global head of compliance, Eric Orsini.
“Knowing your vessel has never been more important than today, and this latest action further highlights this. Simply screening a list is not an effective control at identifying this type of dynamic risk.”
In order to assess your risk exposure, compliance professionals should be asking the following questions:
For more information on how Lloyd's List Intelligence's data, analytics and human expertise can help your business to identify deceptive shipping practices and mitigate risk to your operations, view our risk suite here.