Since the beginning of the invasion, Russia has greatly restricted Ukraine’s maritime trade, and as the war has progressed, it has used the easing of the blockade of Ukrainian ports as negotiating capital. This mechanism worked until July this year and Moscow’s withdrawal from the grain deal. Russia then began bombing Ukraine’s ports to reduce its export capacity.
Russian negotiators were apparently completely disillusioned with the prospect of getting anything useful for themselves from Ukraine and the West for maintaining relatively peaceful commercial shipping from Odessa. This led to the decision to destroy the very object of the negotiations – Ukrainian grain exports – through attacks on the grain terminals of the port of Odessa. The small ports at the mouth of the Danube have not yet been attacked, as the approaches to them are almost entirely in Romanian territorial waters, which somewhat protects sailing vessels, but it can be assumed that Russian forces will try to attack these ports as well .
If there were no port terminals, there would be no exports, no need to hunt ships at sea, to separate commercial ships from those capable of carrying military cargo, to decide which flag ships were inviolable and which were not. In other words, a total blockade can be declared.
The attack by Ukrainian naval drones against Russian ships off Novorossiysk and Kerch and Ukraine’s declaration of Russian ports on the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus as a zone of military operations and military danger were apparently Kiev’s response to Moscow’s attempted naval blockade. They are also part of a plan aimed at reducing Russian exports from Black Sea ports – mainly oil exports.
The authors of the plan may have assumed that the declaration of Russian ports as a war zone should make insurance companies and ship owners think about the risks and, as a result, begin to refuse these routes and not provide insurance coverage. The attacks on the ships “Olenegorsky Gornyak” and “Sig” were to prove that these were not just words.
At the same time, Ukraine will probably try to break through the grain blockade by inviting to its ports ships flying the flag of those countries that Russia will probably not dare to attack. There are suggestions that an attack on a ship flying the flag of a NATO country would be considered an act of aggression, triggering Article 5 of the NATO Charter, leading to a direct conflict between the alliance and Moscow.
So serving Ukrainian exports from such ships can be seen as a kind of gambit: Russia will have to either refuse the attacks or create a pretext for a direct military confrontation with the NATO countries.
Tanker Wars
Trade blockades and wars against merchant shipping have been part of conflicts since ancient times. But current events are most reminiscent of the circumstances of nearly 40 years ago.
During the Iran-Iraq war, the two countries tried to stop the oil trade and started a “tanker war” that lasted from 1984 to 1988. They fired on tankers sailing to the opposing oil ports, including those flying the flags of countries from NATO – the United Kingdom, Hong Kong (then a British possession), the United States, Denmark, Norway, Greece and Turkey. Several dozen merchant ships were damaged by rockets, torpedoes, mines and cannon fire.
Iran attacked not only Iraqi tankers, but also, for example, those serving Kuwaiti exports (Kuwait supported Iraq), even after these tankers were transferred to the American flag.
In 1987, a frigate of the US Navy was attacked, which received two missiles from an Iraqi aircraft, apparently mistaking the frigate for an oil tanker. As a result of the attack, 37 American sailors died, but without particular consequences for the attacking side. At the time, the US supported Iraq against Iran, the incident was investigated by a joint commission, and Iraq paid compensation.
Although the Persian Gulf is becoming a risky area for shipping, the flow of people who want to sail there for oil continues, and insurance continues to be issued and in force, albeit at higher prices. None of the countries whose ships were attacked attempted to invoke Article 5 of the NATO Treaty. At least in this war, the high stakes and regular casualties failed to stop the shipping of oil.
Attacks on tankers in the virtually closed Black Sea have been accompanied by oil spills and significant environmental damage for all coastal states, and this may be one of the reasons Ukraine refrains from them even if the opportunity arises.
Oil for grain
Another way to stop exports from Russian Black Sea ports would be to attack oil terminals, especially those in Novorossiysk. It is very likely that Ukraine has the resources for such an attack and is morally prepared for it.
Two oil terminals operate in Novorossiysk. One, Sheskharis, with traditional berths, is located directly in the port in Novorossiysk Bay and serves tankers receiving oil from Russian producers through the Transneft system. Attacking the facilities in the enclosed bay from the seaward side, however, could prove a relatively difficult task.
The second terminal, Yuzhnaya Ozereevka, functions with the help of three buoys, located four kilometers out to sea, to which tankers are moored. These buoys are much more vulnerable and more difficult to repair than classic coastal port facilities, but they are used to export oil from Kazakhstan’s oil fields, and an attack on them would mostly harm Western oil companies and Kazakhstan, not of Russia.
What will happen if Ukraine proves capable of attacking the Novorossiysk terminals and, unlike the situation during the Iran-Iraq war, shipping actually stops?
It is unlikely, for example, that the Sheskharis terminal will be damaged and the export of Russian oil through it will stop, while the export of oil from Kazakhstan will continue through the Yuzhnaya Ozereevka terminal. In such a situation, we expect a whole range of Russian reactions: looking for and finding significant technical problems that would require a shutdown of the two terminals, a ban on operations due to military threats, or a transfer of exports to the Yuzhnaya Ozereevka terminal, where Russian oil will continue to be transported under the guise of Western and Kazakh oil.
In the event of a complete shutdown of exports through Novorossiysk, Russia will have to redirect its oil flows to other destinations. This would be easier for crude oil. Exports through Novorossiysk were declining even before Russia began cutting production under the recent OPEC+ deal, and since then most of the decline in exports has been on the Black Sea route.
The Ust-Luga Baltic oil port, built in 2012 and expanded several times since then, will be able to handle the volumes that cannot be exported through Novorossiysk, although this will extend the route of Russian oil to India and China and made supplies to Turkey much less profitable.
The diversion will be more painful for Russian exports of petroleum products. After the European embargo on the import of Russian oil products came into force in February 2023, the Mediterranean and African countries became Russia’s main market. In addition, it will put an additional load on the railways in the north-west direction: 4 million tons of diesel fuel go from Volgograd to Novorossiysk via a pipeline per year.
And besides such a development will create problems for Bulgaria and Romania – for them, oil supplies from Russia were recognized as so critical that an exception was made for these countries from the pan-European embargo.
Russian retaliatory attempts to stop Ukrainian exports to the Black Sea while preserving its own are expected, and Ukraine has the opportunity to damage Russian exports. In this case, we can expect a repeat of the tanker war of the 1980s in the Persian Gulf, when profitable exports were not stopped despite high risks. Or – in case there are no risk takers – Russia has options to divert exports to the Baltic Sea at a loss to itself and to the recipients, which include both large developing countries and members of the Western bloc – Ukraine’s allies.
Translation: Dir.bg
2023-08-08 18:56:50
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