Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether her Department has detected any ship-to-ship transfers in British waters that have enabled Russia to evade the price cap on exported oil since December 2022.

The Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI) in HM Treasury is responsible for the implementation of the Oil Price Cap (OPC). Whilst I cannot comment on individual instances of evasion of the OPC due to the sensitivity of that information, British territorial waters are not typically the site of ship-to-ship transfers of this kind.

The UK Government closely monitors these kinds of transfers for OPC evasion and continues to directly target shadow fleet vessels and entities that seek to undermine UK sanctions and facilitate the trade and transportation of Russian oil and oil products.

In October last year, the Department for Transport operationalised a mechanism to challenge suspected shadow fleet vessels with unknown insurance to provide proof of insurance as they transit the English Channel.

OFSI works closely with industry to aid compliance – as evidenced by the February 2024 updates to the OPC compliance regime and the OPC industry advisory on falsified certificates of origin, published in November 2024.