Russia has been sending supertankers loaded with oil around Africa to Asia, suggesting that its fleet may not be immune to Houthi attacks on merchant shipping in the Red Sea.
The two Suezmax vessels could in theory have passed through the Suez Canal at full speed and then travelled south through waters threatened by the Houthis, but instead transferred their cargo to the supertanker Gold Pearl near Egypt's Port Said earlier this month.
Large ships, so-called supertankers, were forced to detour around Africa after loading their cargoes because the water was too deep to navigate the 120-mile channel.
It is unclear whether this logistical twist was intended to avoid the Houthis, given that other Russian cargo continues to sail through the Red Sea, but it is possible that tankers carrying Russian oil have come under attack by militants, making some mariners and ship operators wary of traveling through the region.
The Suezmax tankers Apsu and Arlan, each carrying around one million barrels of crude oil from the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk, met up with the Gold Pearl earlier this month.
Calls and messages to telephone numbers and email addresses of the managers of the three vessels listed in the Equasis Maritime Database went unanswered.
The transfer from Apsu took place between Aug. 6 and 8, according to data tracked by Bloomberg. The two ships were traveling together over a two-day period.
The transfer from Arran was concealed: when it switched sides off the coast of Egypt a few days later, the vessel appeared to be approaching Israel on the same digital tracking system.
Satellite images reviewed by Bloomberg showed the Arlan and Gold Pearl side-by-side near Sidi Kerir on August 10, suggesting so-called spoofing of Suezmax automated signals, or manipulation of ship tracking.
The identities of the two vessels involved in transferring cargo to the Gold Pearl were confirmed by TankerTrackers.com, a company that specializes in tracking covert ship movements.
On August 10, the Suezmax tanker “Arlan” and the VLCC “Gold Pearl” were found anchored next to each other off the coast of Port Said.
Shortly after leaving the Port Said area on August 11, the Gold Pearl's draft was updated to show it was fully loaded, consistent with a Suezmax cargo. The Gold Pearl has now left the Mediterranean and is signalling for Singapore.
The ship had earlier signalled it would call at the Spanish port of Algeciras and was due to briefly anchor east of Malta where it would meet up with an oil tanker and refuel for the longer voyage.
If the ship's final destination was China, the economies of scale gained from using larger tankers to travel the extra distance might justify bypassing Africa.
Most shipped
Most crude oil shipped from Russia's Baltic and Black Sea ports continues to travel via the canal and the Red Sea to India and China.
But several have come under attack by Yemen's Houthi rebels, who have been attacking ships in the southern Red Sea in retaliation for Israel's military operations in Gaza. The ships have been targeted despite repeated assurances by the rebels that Chinese and Russian vessels are safe to sail through.
A third ship-to-ship transfer of Russian Urals crude oil took place in the same area in early August.
The Aframax tanker Arabella, which had been transporting about 730,000 barrels of crude oil from the Russian port city of Primorsk on the Baltic coast, transferred its cargo to the similarly sized Life, which was then transported to the Turkish port city of Tutunciftlik, near Istanbul.
The Life is owned by Istanbul-based Modern Cemi İsletmeçiligi AS, according to shipping data. Until March, the ship was named Beks Sun and owned by Beks Denizçilik ve Ticaret.
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