An analysis of the ships targeted by Washington suggests that nearly 1.5 million barrels a day of crude shipped from Pacific and Arctic ports could be heavily curtailed. More than one-third of those cargoes require specialized, purpose built tankers that will be hard to replace. Flows of the nation’s key Urals grade from ports in the Baltic and Black Sea look set to face less-severe — but still significant — constraints.¹⁾

Crude streams of about 550,000 barrels a day from the Arctic and Sakhalin island in Asia are at risk because the flows depend on specialized tankers built to meet their specific requirements, all of which have been sanctioned.²⁾

The Sakhalin 1 and Sakhalin 2 projects in Russia’s Pacific, with combined crude flows of about 250,000 barrels a day, have seen all dedicated fleets of shuttle tankers designated. The vessels need a bow-loading mechanism to take om cargoes and it doesn’t appear there are other, unsanctioned, ships that can do the same job.³⁾

In the Arctic, three terminals also use dedicated fleets of shuttle tankers to ship about 300,000 barrels a day of crude to Murmansk where cargoes are aggregated into 1 million barrel lots for export. All have been sanctioned, as have the storage vessels — the Umba and the Kola — where the shuttle tankers’ cargoes are collected.⁴⁾