Insurance prices for merchant ships in the Black Sea have tripled in the last month and are likely to rise following recent attacks by Ukraine on ships and ports.
The Financial Times writes about this.
Marcus Baker, head of marine and freight at brokerage Marsh, said war risk insurance rates had risen from about 0.25 to 0.3 percent of a ship’s value in early November to 0.5 to 0.75 percent this week — a 2- to 3.5-fold increase. An insurance broker at another firm said rates for their clients had more than tripled.
Baker said the biggest increases were in the Russian Black Sea areas, with the sharpest increases in prices for Russian-linked tankers and bulk carriers that carry bulk cargoes such as grain.
Attacks on Russian tankers
The explosions on the Russian tankers Kairos and Virat, which are subject to sanctions, became known on November 28. This happened off the coast of Turkey, local services reported that the Kairos vessel began to take on water, and the crew recorded an "external impact", later people were evacuated from it.
The next day, November 29, Babelʼs sources reported that Ukrainian Sea Baby naval drones had been used on the vessels. At the time of the attack, the sanctioned tankers were heading to the port of Novorossiysk for loading.
Both tankers, which could carry nearly $70 million worth of oil and were helping Russia evade international sanctions, were effectively disabled by critical damage sustained after the strikes.
On December 2, the Russian tanker MIDVOLGA-2 informed Turkish authorities that it had been attacked in the Black Sea, almost 15 kilometers off the Turkish coast. Foreign Ministry spokesman Heorhii Tykhyi stated that Ukraine was not involved in this.
On December 6, it was reported that Bulgaria had rescued the damaged tanker Kairos, which was spotted in a state of disrepair off the Bulgarian coast. The Bulgarian Ministry of Transport said it did not understand why the tanker, which was empty, ended up in the area.
Attack on the port of Novorossiysk
The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reported that on the night of November 25, the Defense Forces attacked the Sheskharis terminal in Novorossiysk. It was previously known that oil tanker loading devices and an S-400 air defense missile system launcher were damaged in Novorossiysk.
Ukrainian units had already attacked the port of Novorossiysk on November 14. The attack was a combination of drones and Long Neptune missiles. The strike on the port of Novorossiysk, Russia’s largest export hub on the Black Sea, was Ukraine’s most devastating attack on Russia’s main crude oil export infrastructure in the Black Sea.
Novorossiysk accounts for about a fifth of Russia’s crude oil exports. A prolonged shutdown would have cost Russia’s oil wells in Western Siberia dearly.
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