A Russian oil tanker that was probably located off Malta earlier this year is suspected to have falsely given its position as Greece.
Findings by the Global Fishing Watch, a satellite monitoring NGO, show that the Russian-flagged tanker Kapitan Schemilkin altered its transponder signal to make it appear like it was circling Greece between May and July this year while it was very likely positioned just off the coast of Malta.
It is understood that such behaviour may have been a trial run in methods to conceal its location ahead of sanctions imposed on importing Russian oil that kicked in this week.
There is little the Maltese authorities can do- Government source
Falsifying location records could make it trickier to identify actors attempting to bypass sanctions as they are imposed.
The findings were independently verified by reporters at the Financial Times.
Government sources involved in overseeing the enforcement of sanctions on Russia told Times of Malta they were aware of this issue and had a number of vessels flagged to them over the past year.
However, other than sharing information with international partners, there was little the Maltese authorities could do.
The sources said these vessels would transit through international waters and would normally remain out of the island’s jurisdiction, dropping anchor in bunkering stops like the shallow sand embankment known as Hurd’s Bank to Malta’s southeast.
Starting on December 5, the EU has prohibited the purchase, importation or transfer of seaborne crude oil and certain petroleum products from Russia in retaliation to Vladimir Putin’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
Positions broadcast by identification system transponder
Global Fishing Watch tracked positions broadcast by the Kapitan Schemilkin’s automatic identification system transponder. When they compared those positions to satellite imagery they found that no similar vessel could be seen making the broadcast trips when the tanker was projecting its location in the vicinity of Greece.
The 138-metre tanker can be spotted rather distinctly on satellite imagery acquired by the European Space Agency via the Sentinel 1 satellites, which capture images of the same location roughly every two to five days.
According to the transponder locations during January and August this year, the Kapitan Schemilkin should have appeared on 36 scenes captured by the satellites but was only visible in 28 of them.
Other visual sources were able to confirm that the vessel was missing from its projected route for a long stretch between June and July and for a short period in August, the NGO said.
Satellite reception footprints also used
Global Fishing Watch was able to use satellite reception footprints to look for similar-sized vessels in the area and review the locations of these vessels individually through satellite imagery.
Surprisingly, it found that at points the tanker continued to update its destination and ETA fields accurately while still broadcasting the false coordinates, narrowing down the task of finding the vessel’s true location.
For example, according to the NGO’s data, Kapitan Schemilkin updated its destination to the outer port limits of Malta on May 30 while broadcasting its automatic identification system coordinates as circling the south of Greece.
Cross referenced with satellite imagery, the researchers were able to find a similar sized vessel off the coast of Malta captured in an image at the time.
Last week, the EU struck a deal with the G7 to put a price cap on Russian oil in an effort to starve Russia’s war chest. The cap is intended to make it harder to bypass sanctions by selling the oil beyond the EU.