Ship filled with controversial Russian oil from Dutch waters

The ship is now sailing in the Channel at a speed of approximately 12 knots. According to data from MarineTraffic† This equates to approximately 22 kilometers per hour. If it continues like this, he will be in Gibraltar in about four and a half days. According to the site, that’s where he’s headed.

Gibraltar is part of the United Kingdom in southern Spain on the Mediterranean Sea. The ship comes from the Russian port of Primorsk, where it is loaded with Russian oil. This oil is the reason the ship stayed off the Dutch coast for a week.

The locomotives and pilots refused to assist the ship’s entry into the port of Amsterdam. They were afraid of dangerous situations because of the commotion that arose around the ship.

It does not prevent the transfer of Russian oil to the countries of the European Union, which have so far been exempted from the sanctions imposed on the country. Russian ships are on the sanctions list, but the Sunny Liger is sailing under the flag of the Marshall Islands.

Advice from FNV

The Sunny Liger was originally supposed to dock in Sweden, but dock workers there refused to unload the ship. The Dutch trade union FNV followed suit and called for the ship to be rejected in the Netherlands as well.

So it worked. And if it were up to the FNV, the ship would not be offloaded by colleagues in Gibraltar either. “We will be calling our colleagues in Gibraltar to tell them about the history of this vessel,” says Nick Stam of FNV Havens.

After that it is also advised not to offload the ship. The guild leader does not rule out the possibility that this is a diversion maneuver and that the ship is not on its way to Gibraltar at all. According to Stam, they want to keep him out of sight.

“It’s possible that they just sailed there, because they don’t know what to do,” Stam says. “They might think: ‘We’ll sail a bit and then we’ll see.'”