The Shadow Fleet End?

Why Your Tanker Stocks Are About to Get Interesting

In case you missed it, here is the previous article:

Dear Merchants,

On a quiet morning off the coast of Senegal (5,000 kilometers from the nearest Ukrainian territory) the Turkish owned tanker Mersin nearly went to the bottom of the Atlantic. The explosion that ripped through her hull wasn’t an accident. It was a message. If you’re paying attention to global energy markets, it’s a message that should fundamentally reshape how you think about one of 2025’s most explosive investment opportunities.

Ukraine just demonstrated it can strike Russian oil infrastructure anywhere on the planet. Not just in the Black Sea. Not just in the Mediterranean. Anywhere…

And that changes everything about how oil moves, how it’s priced, and how the ships that carry it make money.

The Mersin was a commercial tanker with a documented history of loading Russian crude from ports like Novorossiysk and Tuapse part of what’s known in shipping circles as Russia’s “shadow fleet”

Let me walk you through why this matters, how we got here, and where the money is hiding in plain sight.

To understand what’s happening, you need to grasp how Russia has been moving oil since Western sanctions really started biting in 2022-2023. Before sanctions, moving Russian crude was simple: one tanker, one voyage, load port to discharge terminal. Done.

Now? That same barrel of oil touches 3 different vessels (full explanation here)

This cascading system multiplies the tonne miles required per barrel by 300%. Think about that. Every Russian barrel now needs 3 times the shipping capacity it used to. That’s not just inefficient it’s a structural scarcity creator for compliant tanker capacity worldwide.

And here’s where it gets interesting for investors this system locked up older tonnage and created what amounts to a hidden tax on global shipping capacity. Russia’s shadow fleet circumvent sanctions and literally removed 8-20% of global crude tanker supply from mainstream operations and trapped it in specialized sanctioned oil routes.

Ukraine’s naval drone program started modestly modified jet skis with explosives, basically harassing Russian warships in the Black Sea. Annoying, but limited in scope.

Fast forward to November-December 2025, and we’re watching something qualitatively different. The strikes on the Kairos and Virat in the Black Sea were precise, calculated hits on vessels already sanctioned for sanctions evasion. Ukraine explicitly claimed responsibility for those, providing legal cover: “We struck sanctioned vessels aiding an enemy war effort”

But the Mersin attack off Senegal? Ukraine maintained strategic ambiguity. No direct claims. Just enough information leaked to make sure shipping markets understood the message: we can reach you anywhere.

The technical evolution is remarkable. Ukraine’s Sea naval drones now pack 2,000 kilograms of explosives, operate up to 1,500 kilometers from launch points, and use Starlink-controlled guidance systems with AI based object recognition accurate to within 10 meters. These are precision strike platforms that can execute complex targeting sequences with minimal human oversight.

Why does Ukraine care so much about oil tankers?

Because Russia’s war machine runs on oil revenue. Degrading the infrastructure that enables oil monetization isn’t just economically savvy under international law frameworks governing economic warfare, it’s a legitimate military objective. Hit the tankers, you hit the cash flow. Hit the cash flow, you hit Russia’s ability to sustain military operations.

When Ukraine demonstrated it could sink tankers thousands of kilometers from home, the insurance markets immediately repriced risk.

War-risk insurance premiums for Black Sea ports jumped 250% in less than two weeks. Marsh, the world’s largest marine insurance broker, reported that Russian port calls spiked from 0.25-0.30% of vessel value to as much as 1.0% for certain routes. That’s a massive increase.

Let me translate that into dollars. A $300 million VLCC (Very Large Crude Carrier) now carries $3 million in incremental insurance costs per round voyage through the Black Sea versus $750,000 before the escalation. That’s a $2.25 million swing. At current 50 day voyage cycles, that translates into $50,000 in daily rate impact.

Ship owners can’t absorb that. It flows through directly as margin expansion or forces charterers to reroute around conflict zones entirely which brings us to the 2nd cascading effect (+ 💰The Merchant’s Play)