Shadow fleet vessels passing Skagen, June 19 to Oct 2, 2025

Key results that can be derived from the data:

Shadow fleet: 370 tankers of the shadow fleet entered or left the Baltic passing Skagen between June 19 and October 2, 2025. 188 left the Baltic, 182 entered it (Lloyd's Seasearcher).

Sanctioned vessels: Out of the 188 tankers leaving the Baltic, 123 fall under one or several of the sanctions covered by Lloyd's Seasearcher Sanctions List. Note: As the EU introduced new sanctions during this period, not all 123 may have been sanctioned when entering or leaving the Baltic.

False flag vessels: According to Equasis, of the 188 shadow fleet tankers leaving the Baltic, 27 were flying a false flag as of October 2, and 23 flew a false flag when passing Skagen. In total, there have been 52 incidents of a sanctioned tanker flying a false flag passing Skagen on its way out of the Baltic. All of these will also have passed German waters. They were falsely flying the flags of Aruba, the Comoros, Benin, and Malawi.

Age structure: Out of the 188 shadow fleet tankers leaving the Baltic, 170 vessels are 16 years and older, and 70 are 20 years and older. On average, shadow fleet tankers leaving the Baltic had an age of 18.6 years, the oldest vessel having an age of 26 years (built in 1999).

Shadow fleet definition: Lloyd's shadow fleet list was used (as of October 2), with Lloyd's defining these as "tankers exhibiting deceptive shipping practices and traits typical of the fleet that facilitates the export and import of sanctioned oil cargoes from Iran, Russia, and Venezuela." Full methodology can be viewed here.

Equasis: Equasis is a database on ships' particulars set up by the European Commission and the French Maritime Administration. It regularly sources vessel particulars from commercial operators such as MarineTraffic, Lloyd's Register, IHS Maritime, VesselTracker, and various national and international associations and ship registers.

Vessel selection: This analysis includes all tanker vessels that can ship oil products (combined chemical and oil tankers, crude oil tankers, product tankers, and unspecified tankers) and excludes chemical tankers.