The Economist - UK (2022-04-16)

The Economist April 16th 2022 67

Science & technology

Trackingshipping

Who’s who on the ocean blue

N

ever before have  the  activities  of

ocean­going  vessels  been  under  so

much  scrutiny.  So  says  Oleg  Ustenko,  the

economics adviser to Volodymyr Zelensky,

Ukraine’s president, and a leader of a gov­

ernment  initiative  called  the  Russian

Tanker  Tracking  Group  (rttg).  Working

with  tips  from  a  network  of  experts  and

spies, including foreign officials who con­

tribute  on  the  sly,  the  rttg,  Dr  Ustenko

says,  tracks  the  energy  shipments  with

which  “Russia  is  desperately  trying  to  fi­

nance its military machine”.

Despite  the  sanctions  imposed  by

America  and  Europe,  most  of  Russia’s  en­

ergy shipments have remained legal. Out­

rage over its war on Ukraine, however, has

left  many  firms  keen  to  avoid  the  reputa­

tional  risks  of  dealing  with  entities  or

goods  of  Russian  origin.  Beyond  that,  as

the  pandemic  and  war  have  tightened

commodity  markets,  the  value  of  detailed

data on shipments has risen. As Reid I’An­

son of the Houston office of Kpler, a firm of

commodities analysts, notes, even traders

who  won’t  buy  illicit  oil  can  make  better

decisions  if  they  can  gauge  how  much

sanctioned countries such as Iran are man­

aging to smuggle out.

Technology  hopes  to  provide  such  in­

formation.  The  rttg,  for  example,  uses

“network analysis” software to find reveal­

ing  relationships  among  disparate  bits  of

information.  The  group  is  already  notch­

ing  up  successes.  These  include  identify­

ing  shipments  of  Kazakh  oil  believed  to

contain  portions  of  clandestinely  loaded

Russian crude, says Dr Ustenko. Alerts are

sent to relevant governments and firms, as

well as several Ukrainian ministries.

Data  from  ship  transponders  inform

much of the analysis. Big commercial ves­

sels  must  transmit  their  location  and  an

identifying code to networks of terrestrial

and satellite receivers known as the Auto­

matic  Identification  System  (ais).  Some­

thing as simple as an unusual acceleration

may be a clue that a crew is buying time for

an  illicit  deal.  But  the  key  to  flagging  po­

tential mischief, says Ivan Ladan, the boss

of Marine Digital, an analytics firm in Lü­

beck, Germany, is to use software that ana­

lyses the behaviour of ships in light of ma­

ny different bits of information.

Marine  Digital’s  software,  for  instance,

examines  a  ship’s  declared  cargo,  route,

and insurance details, as well as historical

navigation patterns in various weather and

market  conditions.  Crime  and  corruption

in  different  places  are  also  taken  into  ac­

count.  The  software  is  even  fed  port  re­

cords on how low a vessel sits in the water,

revealing  the  tonnage  of  cargo  aboard.

When  it  smells  something  fishy,  the  firm

alerts  authorities  and  its  clients,  mostly

shipowners  unhappy  to  hear  that  one  of

their leased vessels may be up to no good.

Sanctions­busting often involves trans­

fers  of  cargo  between  ships,  far  from  the

eyes of port authorities. Vortexa, a London­

based  firm,  runs  software  that  looks  for

these “trans­shipments”. One clue is when

a full and an empty vessel built to carry the

same type of cargo meet away from crowd­

ed  shipping  lanes.  Vortexa’s  software  also

looks for encounters between a vessel that

has  a  dodgy  reputation  and  one  that  does

not  (or  does  not  yet).  The  latter  are  pre­

ferred for passing off sanctioned cargo as a

legitimate  delivery.  A  ship’s  age  also  mat­

ters.  The  riskier  the  voyage,  the  older  the

vessel is likely to be.

It is too soon to see how efforts to dodge

Crowdsourced data, satellites and clever algorithms try to catch

ocean-going blockade runners

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