US president Donald Trump unveiled sweeping sanctions on Russia’s top oil producers, Rosneft and Lukoil, this week in his most extensive energy crackdown since returning to office. Aimed at forcing Moscow toward peace talks, the measures cut the companies off from US banking and dollar systems. The move is expected to halt Russian crude exports to India, with Chinese refiners also pausing their Russian purchases, redrawing global tanker trade routes and boosting demand for non-Russian oil on long-haul voyages. The EU and UK have also hit Russia with coordinated sanctions targeting China-linked entities and Russia’s expanding shadow fleet.
Konstantinos Kyriakopoulos, CEO and co-founder of DeepSea, was this week’s big Maritime CEO interview. “We’ve passed through the era of half-baked proof-of-concepts – and every operator has been burned at least once or twice in the process. But the industry has come out stronger,” Kyriakopoulos told Maritime CEO, arguing that this technological wave will be driven by three things: adoption, no fragmentation and results.
As ever, Splash has been spoilt for choice when it comes to great Opinion pieces this week. If you haven’t done so already, check out this exclusive on geopolitics and shipping from Neil Shearing, group chief economist at Capital Economics, and author of this year’s bestseller, The Fractured Age.
With flag-hopping becoming standard operating procedure for the shadow – or parallel – fleet, monthly changes in registry numbers have never been so extreme as this year, as the latest edition of the Splash Wrap podcast explains.
