Caroline Bezengi: Shadow Fleet Oil Disaster
800sq km and growing
The Ship That Should Not Have Been There
The Caroline Bezengi is a 274-metre Suezmax tanker built in 2001. It is part of Russia's so-called shadow fleet: older, poorly maintained ships that sail under obscure flags, lack Western insurance, and exist primarily to move sanctioned Russian crude to buyers who cannot be seen purchasing it openly. The vessel was sanctioned by the UK, EU, Ukraine, Canada, and Switzerland for carrying oil that finances Russia's war. It was nominally registered under Cameroon's flag but was de-listed from that registry in June 2026, one of 39 vessels struck off at the same time. In April 2026 it loaded at Novorossiysk on Russia's Black Sea coast, transited the Suez Canal in late May, and was heading for Asia with a cargo of close to one million barrels of crude when things went badly wrong off Yemen.
What is at stake. The Hallaniyat Islands sit inside a nature reserve established by royal decree in 2025. It is home to endangered Arabian Sea humpback whales, one of the world's smallest and most isolated whale populations, plus Socotra cormorants, nesting green and loggerhead turtles, and coral reefs. Taimur Al Said of Oman's Environment Authority says oil is already killing turtles and birds and damaging coral. The monsoon season is hampering cleanup, and forecasters warn the slick could drif
"The situation surrounding the Caroline Bezengi is yet another alarming example of the serious environmental risks posed by Russia's so-called shadow fleet.
"Nina Noelle
How cleanup works at this scale. A spill of 800 sq km cannot be contained by booms alone. The response requires dispersant aircraft to spray across the affected area, booms and skimmer vessels to collect surface oil before it reaches the coast or sinks to the seafloor, and controlled burning of any thicker accumulations offshore. Oman is coordinating aerial surveillance, diver teams, and satellite environmental modelling. Officials are also planning to transfer the crude cargo from the stricken
The shadow fleet problem is bigger than one ship. Russia currently operates an estimated 400 to 600 shadow fleet vessels carrying sanctioned oil around the world. Many are ageing, uninsured, and uninspected. The Caroline Bezengi is not the first such ship to suffer a catastrophic failure at sea, and environmental experts warn it will not be the last. The International Maritime Organization has no current mechanism to compel inspections of sanctioned vessels, and the gap in liability means no sin
