Kaine, Colleagues Introduce Legislation to Sanction Russian Energy Sector, Shadow Fleet

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Senate colleagues introduced the Sanctioning Harbors and Dodgers of Western Sanctions, or SHADOW Fleets Act, which would vastly expand U.S. sanctions authorities to target a collection of older, reflagged oil tankers that Russia uses to circumvent existing U.S. sanctions on Russian oil and energy revenues. This collection of oil tankers is known as the Russian shadow fleet. The bill would discourage countries from purchasing Russian oil amid Russia’s current war in Ukraine.

“The failure of recent negotiations, and Putin’s repeated and brazen incursions into NATO airspace, have made clear that Putin is not operating in good faith and has no interest in ending Russia’s war in Ukraine. The U.S. must take steps to make it harder for Russia to evade U.S. sanctions and deter Putin from taking further actions that would threaten the U.S. or our allies in Europe,” said Kaine. “That’s why I’m joining my colleagues in introducing this bipartisan legislation to expand sanctions on Russia’s illicit shadow fleet and limit Putin’s ability to finance his war.”

For far too long, Russia floated its economy with massive oil and energy revenues earned through the exploitation of a porous global oil price cap and blatant evasion of Western sanctions using its shadow fleet. As tensions rise in Eastern Europe, the G7, the European Union, and others are taking steps to increase sanctions enforcement. In response, Russia has deployed warships to escort its shadow fleet vessels through the Baltic Sea, an unprecedented escalation that increases the potential for a security or ecological incident.

Specifically, the SHADOW Fleets Act would:

• Provide a list of indicators U.S. authorities may use to identify vessels supporting the Russian shadow fleet, making it easier to find and sanction these vessels sooner;
• Establish strict sanctions liability for any ship that engages in a ship-to-ship transfer with a sanctioned shadow fleet vessel;
• Sanction Russian Arctic Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) projects and new Russian LNG project development;
• Identify critical choke points in the Russian defense industrial base where the U.S. can effectively target sanctions and create bottlenecks for Russian defense supply chains;
• And halt the Nord Stream II pipeline to Europe.

The bill is led by U.S. Senators Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and Jim Risch (R-ID) and cosponsored by U.S. Senators Tom Cotton (D-AR), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Pete Ricketts (R-NE), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Chris Coons (D-DE), and Lindsey Graham (D-SC).

Full text of the bill is available here.

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