Washington has not sanctioned a ship over Russia since 10 January 2025. One of the tankers it listed that day, the Talisman, is now due on the US East Coast around 9 November with Russian diesel, the Financial Times reported, under a Treasury licence that permits the trade until 7 April 2027 and says nothing about which ships may carry it. A second tanker, the Leruo, is reported due two days later, though its own tracking signal has shown “for orders” rather than a US port. Both are on EU and UK sanctions lists, and Equasis records no P&I insurer for either.
One cargo, two rulebooks
On Russian shipping, US and European sanctions now point in opposite directions. Since January 2025 Washington has added at least 429 ships to its lists, all under other programmes and mainly Iran, according to Treasury records held in the Mariel database; in the same period the EU, the UK, Switzerland, Ukraine and Canada have all added the Talisman. A third diesel cargo is aboard the Agioi Fanendes, a Greek-managed tanker insured with Britannia and on no sanctions list. For European firms nothing has changed. An EU listing still shuts a ship out of EU ports and bars EU companies from serving it, the EU and UK bans on Russian refined products remain in force, and the Commission declined in May to follow Washington and London in easing restrictions on Russian oil.
Meanwhile, on Iran
On Iran, Washington is still listing. On 21 October the Treasury blocked seven ships managed by Roxette Maritime Shipping and Trading from a Piraeus office, and designated Karnakis and Karnakis, the law firm it says acts as Roxette’s corporate agent. Equasis records Roxette as safety manager of 19 ships: the other 12 are on no list, 11 are owned by companies at the Panama City address the Treasury gives for the law firm, and six have been inspected in Iranian ports since Roxette took over their management. The Treasury’s case rests on three ships it says carried Iranian goods within the past year; it listed the other four because Roxette manages them. Equasis records one difference: on the seven listed ships Roxette is also commercial manager, while on the 12 that role is recorded as the owning company. For compliance teams, the 12 share the office and, in all but one case, the Panama address named in the Treasury’s own action.
Ratings out of sight
MEPs from four political groups have tabled amendments to stop the EU publishing each ship’s IMO carbon-intensity rating, the A-to-E grade the Commission wants added to its ship-by-ship emissions database; the IMO keeps individual ratings confidential. The MEPs argue that public grades could damage ships’ commercial position, describing the rating as influenced by factors beyond a ship’s control. Against that, the Commission’s evaluation found more ship-level data would help researchers use the published figures, and in 2022 EU Member States told the IMO that four years of ship-by-ship publication had produced no reported negative impact on shipping companies. The environment committee is provisionally due to vote on 1 December.
Maritime Watch’s archive holds more than five thousand articles on EU maritime regulation, and this week’s coverage includes much more: where Sweden’s released tanker Sea Owl I went next, the Court of Justice overruling its own advocate general on Romanian pilotage, Libya’s vote to endorse its sea-border deal with Turkey, and the Commission’s answer on Ireland’s live-export ferries. Read it all at maritimewatch.eu. Free trials are available on request to editor@maritimewatch.eu.