Callisto

The European Union has adopted its newest sanctions package on Dec 16, 2024, at the Foreign Affairs Council meeting, adding 52 new vessels, among them the 'Callisto', to the sanctions list that have been deemed by the EU to be supporting Russia’s war machine. The vessels that have been sanctioned are primarily involved in circumventing the oil price cap mechanism implemented by the West, in arms deliveries, and in the transportation of stolen grain. This latest package has brought the total number of vessels sanctioned by the EU to 79. The majority of the vessels are involved in the transport of Russian oil and in transporting arms for the Russian military. The sanctions package also targets a total of 54 individuals and 30 entities that are deemed to be bolstering Russia’s war effort. Among them, there are also entities and individuals in China and North Korea who have been deemed to be supplying Russia with dual-use materials to support Russia’s military efforts. Two senior North Korean officials and seven Chinese individuals and companies have been targeted in the latest sanctions. The purpose of the sanctions has been defined to increase the operational costs for Russia by banning them from ports in the EU and hindering them from receiving maritime services.

SWEDEN has mobilised aircraft and warships to hunt a Russian submarine believed to have sent a secret distress call late last week. Suspicions were raised when a commercial tanker operated by Russia was noticed circling in a narrow area of Swedish waters. Defence offials then mobilised the Swedish military, sending patrol ships and helicopters to search for what they called “foreign underwater activity”. Swedish news website SvD Nyheter now claims the search is aimed at locating a possible Russian submarine believed to have sent a distress call on a Russian emergency frequency. The newspaper website cites “credible sources” saying the tranmission was made in plain language, followed by a second encrypted transmission on Friday. The transmissions were traced to Swedish waters. While Sweden’s government has not revealed the nature of the incident, speculation surrounds the behaviour of the oil tanker NS Concord, a Liberian-registered vehicle that has apparently been circling in Swedish waters for the past week

The SCF owned 106,000DWT crude oil tanker NS Concord was deployed on May 4 at offshore anchorage of Big Port St. Petersburg (Anchorage 5A, behind Kronstadt, an offshore transshipment complex of ZAO In-Transit) as a floating storage/offloading vessel for transshipment of export crude oil. Head of Seaports Authority Big Port of St. Petersburg Peter Parinov told a PortNews correspondent that the Port Authority has not yet received other applications for deployment of similar FSO vessels at the port's outer anchorage. Parinov did not rule out that this season only one FSO tanker will be operating at the anchorage for products transshipment. The tanker is expected to transship during the season 500,000 to 600,000 tonnes of oil products in the 2014 navigation season.