Oil from Sanctioned Russian Tanker Caroline Bezengi Hits Omani Beaches as UK Firm Begins Emergency Salvage

Shadow-fleet tankers mirror earlier sanction-busting fleets such as Iran’s “ghost armada” of the 2010s; many met trouble, including the Sanchi’s fatal 2018 blaze east of Shanghai. Like the 1989 Exxon Valdez (37 kt spilled) and South Africa’s Castillo de Bellver fire in 1983, today’s leak underscores how a single aging hull can overwhelm coastal ecosystems despite 50 years of MARPOL rules. The Caroline Bezengi episode spotlights two long-term dynamics: (1) economic sanctions are pushing oil trade into poorly insured, under-maintained vessels that operate far from traditional regulatory oversight; (2) climate-driven intensification of monsoon patterns adds operational risk windows for salvage. Over a century, chokepoints from the Bab el-Mandeb to the Strait of Hormuz will stay vital to energy flows; if enforcement gaps persist, more ‘dark’ tankers will transit war zones, making multi-state liability stalemates—and the ecological bills they dump on littoral nations—the new norm rather than an exception.