so these ships are abandoned by the companies that own them, with the crew still on board? and then the crew is just stuck there with dwindling food supplies until somebody comes to rescue them?
in my head this seems like a problem that could be solved by getting on the radio to a nearby port and saying "hey, we've got a tanker carrying $50m worth of crude oil, you can have it if you let us dock", but obviously it can't be that simple if that's not happening. why not?
This seems like one of those problems that arise when we let rich people and corporations arbitrage for the lowest possible legal consequences, in this case flags of convenience that have no standards.
There is always some poor or corrupt country willing to ignore consequences as long as they can make a buck. The profits are private, but costs and consequences always laid onto the public. Miserable way to run things.
>There is always some poor or corrupt country willing to ignore consequences as long as they can make a buck.
this is basically what i'm suggesting as the solution here, rather than the problem.
if you're in command of a tanker carrying $50m worth of oil, and the company that technically owns it owes you and your crew $175k and doesn't want to pay, surely you're never too far from a country who would be happy to take that boat off your hands and cover the lost wages. how are these boats just waiting around in the ocean for a solution, when there's so much wealth on board?
I think their problem is that very few countries have refinery capacity to deal with crude oil, which is what these ships contain. So the crew have limited choices. It is a "someone else's problem", to quote the Hitchhiker's Guide.
It's not that simple. The stranded vessels are often not really seaworthy and can't be safely sailed to another port. They might be low on fuel with no cash to buy more (the cargo won't necessarily work as fuel). The vessel may be docked in a port already and owe fees to the local authorities who won't allow it to leave.
I don't think it's as easy to offload oil as you're assuming. Most of the sketchy countries don't have refineries or storage capacity and they risk some fallout from the sanctions if they do anything with the oil. Like maybe if you could get the boat to North Korea they might pay you $0.01 on the dollar or something.
> so these ships are abandoned by the companies that own them, with the crew still on board? and then the crew is just stuck there with dwindling food supplies until somebody comes to rescue them?
Yes, basically. The situation is really really nasty, every year thousands of sailors are stuck aboard abandoned ships [1][2]. Sometimes, crews get stuck for years [3] - and the situation is made worse by the fact that leaving ship means forfeiting payment.
That's how fucked up our world is outside the jurisdiction of a well functioning government and an engaged and educated populace. It's only as nice as we decide to make it.
the thing is, technically "convenience flags" are outside our jurisdiction... but the companies owning the ships? the companies chartering the ships?
these are in Western jurisdictions. We could hold them accountable, but we don't, because freight companies are insanely well connected in politics and too many too rich people profit too much from this kind of exploitation.
When you are flying a foreign flag docked in a port you are complex legal situation - in international law, you follow the laws of the flag country, in addition to being under local jurisdiction (most of the time). And if you’re flying a flag for a boat that’s not registered under that flag, which as this article explains is easily verifiable, who is going to buy the oil, and how? not to mention any possible international sanctions on the oil, customs, the crew getting paid and wanting to return home, wherever that may be, and you get situations that can last for a long time. For this case a boat to boat transfer may be the only real way.
Your comment hints at another problem, which is that allowing the cargo into a port possibly could be exploited as a loophole to break sanctions.
Yet another big problem is that cargo might be too low in value, or even undesirable. Like the cargo of Ammonium Nitrate that exploded in Beirut a few years ago (it had been taken off the docked ship which then sank in the port. The cargo was stored in the port, then stuck in legal and payment disputes, and the result was horrific).
Under international law piracy has the for “private ends” clause when defining piracy meaning nation states can’t really do piracy but instead commerce raiding which is a form of warfere.
these are usually very poor crew trying to escape desperate circumstances. they arent in a bargaining position and are easy prey to pirates depending on the part of the world they are in. Since they’re ghost ships, anyone could basically take what they pleased without anyone knowing, not to mention whatever country is willing to take an unregistered ship to offload oil in amounts that someone annoying could notice.
it’s a bad situation for everyone but the seller that convinced the ship it could turn it around.
They have control of the ship, but the ship doesn't own the cargo! It's not legally theirs to sell.
As staff who are presumably looking to eventually get another job in shipping, they have to follow the rules even if it's not clear what they are or the owner isn't following them.
The fact that the cargo is sanctioned makes it even more likely that a port will say "we're not touching that".
The "flag of convenience" situation .. well, it's a great way of evading legal responsibility, but it's also a very old one. That's going to persist for some time to come.
> As staff who are presumably looking to eventually get another job in shipping, they have to follow the rules even if it's not clear what they are or the owner isn't following them.
Interesting setup that the lowly crew have to follow the rules to stay in shipping but the owner doesn’t.
Usual story of the little guy getting screwed.
Much like hiring undocumented people for work, the rules need to be changed so the owners get immense fines in these situations.
Is there such a thing as mid-ocean fuel transfer? I can imagine some intrepid individuals strike up a bargain to siphon the fuel off of the abandoned ship onto one with the appropriate paperwork.
They work for Putin's war, so they they should be treated as hostile navy anyway. They'd be lucky if they'll end up arrested and not blown up. Ukraine does blow them up already when opportunity presents itself.
If Putin was a rational actor he probably wouldn't be putting up WWI casualty numbers to capture podunk towns in east Ukraine that few people care about
Are you paid for it or you spread fascist koolaid for free? Either way, Putin's money is running out. So unless you are a propaganda zombie, you can forget about relying on your fascist boss.
in my head this seems like a problem that could be solved by getting on the radio to a nearby port and saying "hey, we've got a tanker carrying $50m worth of crude oil, you can have it if you let us dock", but obviously it can't be that simple if that's not happening. why not?