Everything started with following Elon Musk’s jet… Then we started following the Russian jets. And now it’s time for the Russian oil tanker tracker…
The new tool comes from data scientists at Greenpeace UK, who have created an automated bot that uses publicly available data to tweet about the movements of oil and gas tankers leaving Russian ports. Greenpeace says the goal with this tool is to cut off one of Russia’s main sources of income that helped fuel President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.
Russia generates significant revenue from oil and gas, and about 40 percent of its federal budget is based on fossil fuel revenues. Basically, this means that the tankers that fulfill the contracts contribute to Russia’s war machine. By tweeting the origin, identity and destination of tankers docking in Russian ports, Greenpeace hopes to embarrass companies and countries from buying oil and gas from the country.
Welcome to the #RussianTankerTracker bot!
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— Russian Tanker Tracker (@RUTankerTracker) March 11, 2022
Georgia Whitaker, an oil campaigner at Greenpeace UK, told Protocol, “This is really what needs to be emphasized politically. It’s a major hypocrisy,” he said. “Politicians say all the right things, but they don’t put it into action.” Greenpeace also says activists diverted a tanker bound for Sweden.
Of course, none of these transports are illegal yet. The Twitter bot was launched on March 11, just days after President Joe Biden announced an executive order banning Russian oil and gas imports. By executive order, the Biden administration forbade the immediate effect of new contracts and gave existing orders 45 days to complete delivery.
The UK government has said it will phase out the purchase of Russian fossil fuels, but has given buyers until the end of the year to get their business in order. No EU country has yet enacted bans on Russian oil or gas.
But the bot provides unprecedented transparency to an industry that tends to operate in a way that is invisible to the general public. @RUTankerTracker bot uses data from MarineTraffic, the shipping equivalent of a flight tracking website. The site uses the automatic identification system (AIS), which all large ships (over 300 tons) or cruise ships should use. Greenpeace data scientists also use financial data sources like Bloomberg and Refinitiv to help determine a ship’s cargo and destination.
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