Sweden’s Coast Guard said it boarded a tanker suspected of causing an oil spill in the Baltic Sea after the vessel left a Russian port, adding that the ship is subject to European Union sanctions linked to Russia’s “shadow fleet” used to move Russian oil. Investigators detected the spill early Thursday east of Gotland island and identified the Flora 1 as the suspected source, the Coast Guard said.
In a statement, Daniel Stenling, the Swedish Coast Guard deputy chief of operations, said the agency acted after it detected what he described as “emissions,” which he linked to enhanced maritime surveillance carried out amid what he called a deteriorating security situation in the Baltic Sea region. Stenling said there were no immediate details on what caused the spill.
The Coast Guard said it boarded the vessel early Friday and took the tanker and its 24-member crew to anchorage near Ystad in southern Sweden. It said it was unclear under which flag the vessel was traveling and where it was headed, according to the Coast Guard’s statement.
The Coast Guard described the Flora 1 as a tanker under EU sanctions that forbid transactions involving it. The EU sanctions apply to vessels accused of carrying Russian oil while “practicing irregular and high-risk shipping practices,” which Sweden said can include turning off automatic tracking systems to obscure a ship’s location.
The Associated Press reported that the tanker departed the Russian port of Primorsk, where a major Russian oil export terminal is located, on Tuesday, citing MarineTraffic maritime data. The shadow fleet, according to the report, emerged after Group of Seven democracies imposed a price cap on Russian oil intended to limit revenues funding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with enforcement focused on barring insurance and shipping companies from handling oil above the cap.
Sweden’s Civil Defense Minister Carl-Oskar Bohlin said the shadow fleet of older, inadequately insured tankers poses a “significant security and environmental threat,” and said the government viewed the incident “with grave concern.” Bohlin said the Coast Guard sees no imminent risk of the oil reaching land, and that officials can take measures for oil cleanup if necessary. He said up to 18 cubic meters, or 113 barrels, of oil was released.
The Ukrainian government told Sweden it viewed the incident as part of the shadow fleet’s broader sanctions-evasion patterns. The Ukrainian government said the vessel is owned by a Hong Kong company and has been affiliated with an Indian company described as one of the leading operators of the shadow fleet involved in transporting Russian crude oil. A Ukrainian government sanctions website said the Flora 1 carried the flag of Sierra Leone but falsely used Benin as its flag country, and that it previously was detected near Greece doing ship-to-ship oil transfers and turning off its vessel location system.