Since mid-December, the United States has randed at least seven oil tankers off the coast of Venezuela. In January, the French navy also intercepted an oil tanker, testifying to a tightening of the European approach to these dilapidated ships flying a flag of convenience
« French Navy, French Navy! » On January 22, the Grinch oil tanker, flying the flag of the Comoros and under EU, Swiss and United States sanctions, sailed in the Alboran Sea, between Morocco and Spain, when it was intercepted. Coming from Murmansk, in northern Russia, he loaded crude oil in an Arctic port. His destination? » For orders, » says its AIS signal, reports Lloyd’s list. In other words, no port of unloading has yet been assigned to him. A common but increasingly suspicious practice, because it is characteristic of Russia’s « ghost fleet », used to circumvent international sanctions and sell its gross. Supported by the United Kingdom, the French National Navy stries the boat, suspected of flying a false flag and diverts it to the port of Marseille-Fos.
About ten days earlier, it was Germany that prevented the entry into its territorial waters of another oil tanker, the Tavian, flying the Cameroonian flag and suspected by Berlin of using a falsified registration. Interventions of this type are multiplying. « There is undeniably a change in approach in a number of Western countries, which traditionally observe great caution with regard to any offense or any attack on what they perceive as freedom of navigation, » explains Stéphane Audrand, independent consultant in international risks, historian, and reserve officer in the Navy.
source : le temps
