The dark fleet of sanctioned vessels which transport Russian, Venezuelan and Iranian crude above a given price cap are largely old and pooröy maintained.

They are due for scrapping but no cash buyer operating in US dollars wants to touch these vessels, and the reputabe yards will not either.

Many yards in India have spent a lot of money in recent years to be come compliant with the standards of the Hong Kong Ship Recycling Convention

which is now in place, but a good shipping market has meant very little tonnage has been scrapped (owners want to keep their vessels while the sun is shipping

and they can make hay). So these shadow fleet tankers are a tempting option in lean times.

In this deep-dive episode of Wavelength Plus,TradeWinds' Craig Eason talks to Anil Sharma, Founder and CEO at GMS, one of the shipping industry's cash buyers of old tonnage destined for recycling. For 30 years he has been buying old ships and selling them direct to the ship recycling facilities in Alang in India and other places.

Dr Sharma talks to Craig about the need to make it possible to legally sell these vessels and scrap them before they become a disaster and to prevent the shadow recycling yards taking them without doing all the safety and environmental checks expected under the HKSRC.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.