Sweden Grabs Its First Shadow Fleet Vessel || Peter Zeihan

0:00You're listening to a podcast right now, driving, working out, walking the dog. If you're into podcasts, chances are you have something to say too. With RSS.com, starting your own is free and easy. Upload an episode, and we distribute it to Apple podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and hundreds more. Track your listeners, see where they're from, and start earning from ads like this. Even with just 10 listeners a month. If you've been thinking about starting a podcast, this is your sign. Start free at RSS.com. Everybody, Peter Zine here coming to you from Colorado. Today we have to take a break from what's going on in Iran and look further north to Sweden of all places. The Swedes over the weekend have brought in a Russian shadow fleet vessel into their ports and basically have arrested the crew. This is interesting for a number of reasons. Number one, we've had a couple of dozen shadow vessels be captured by various powers. The United States, India, France, Belgium.

1:02This is the first for Sweden, and so we're seeing a broadening net of countries going after the shadow fleet, which is basically what the Russians have been depending upon in order to ferry things that are under sanctions around the world. Second, beyond this being Sweden's first one, this is the first shadow vessel that wasn't a tanker. It's a bulker. And it's unclear whether it was carrying cargo from the Middle East to Russia or stolen Ukrainian grain from Ukraine to Russia to somewhere else. Really doesn't matter specifically. The point is is that the entire shadow fleet, not just the tankers, everything that the Russians have been relying upon to maintain their reach beyond their own territory, is now under direct threat. We will probably see a complete dismemberment of the shadow fleet over the course of the next several weeks. And now that we have countries as minor as Belgium and countries as well placed as Sweden going after them because Sweden basically controls the Baltic Sea if it wants to, this should wrap up pretty quick.

2:03We're now in a weird little situation though where there's going to be a logistical issue that's really big. The shadow fleet is over a thousand ships, and there are not enough port facilities in the world to take them all. It will probably happen at the end of the days. They'll all end up eventually in a place like Bangladesh or India where they will be broken down for their steal. All of the shadow fleet vessels are old. Most of them could not qualify for a normal insurance policy under normal circumstances and it's only because they're operating functionally illegal under the Russian banner that they are still afloat. But as logistical problems go, that's a really good problem to have. So in the meantime, they'll probably be dropping anchor off places until they can be unloaded but that will absolutely take weeks to months. So we are at the beginning of the end of the process and now we can start looking to the other side where we go from having a surplus of vessels in the world to a shortage of vessels in the world and where we have Russian crude and Iranian crude and Venezuelan crude and

3:04perhaps Saudi and Emirati and Kuwaiti crude all falling off of the market at the same time. So what was for me really dramatic when this started to happen about a month ago. Now with the Iran War, I don't want to say it's a routing era but this is just the lesser of the two big things going on and it's all happening at once so buckle up. You're listening to a podcast right now, driving, working out, walking the dog. If you're into podcasts, chances are you have something to say too. With RSS.com, starting your own is free and easy. Upload an episode and we distribute it to Apple podcasts, Spotify, Amazon music and hundreds more. Back your listeners, see where they're from and start earning from ads like this. Even with just 10 listeners a month. If you've been thinking about starting a podcast, this is your sign. Start free at RSS.com.