Russian Oil Flows Are Becoming Increasingly Obscured
Spoofed positions, missing signals and cargo switches make tracking shipments more complicated
Two tankers switch a cargo of Russian oil at sea.
Photographer: Laurent Laughlin/BloombergRussia's oil exports are becoming increasingly difficult to track as the tankers moving the barrels disappear from digital tracking systems.
Moscow’s exports slipped slightly in the past four weeks, according to monitoring of those flows by Bloomberg. But keeping track is becoming harder because more and more ships are giving false locations — or no locations at all — to the industry’s Automated Information System, or AIS for short.