Belgium Seizes Shadow Fleet Vessel || Peter Zeihan

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Everybody, Peter Zayn here, coming from Colorado.

It is the first of March and today we're going to talk about Belgium.

Earlier today, the Belgian government grabbed a Russian shadow tanker and escorted it to

port and opened a criminal investigation all in one.

I've been watching the shadow fleet for, well, four years at this point.

It's the primary way that countries like Venezuela, Iran, and Russia have been earning oil

income while under sanctions.

They put out a bunch of really old ships, they fake their papers, they give them fake insurance

policies, and then they sailed kind of under the radar.

Of late, the United States has gone after the shadow fleet that was involved with Venezuela.

And now we have had several instances where Russian shadow tankers have been grabbed.

Some by the United States, one by France, which was then summarily released because the

French quote didn't know how to prosecute, which made them look really stupid.

But the Belgians apparently have figured it out and they've already opened prosecution.

Now, I don't say positive things about Belgium often, but weather is awful.

The food isn't that great.

The beer is questionable.

The Dutch part of Belgium is in the north.

The French part is in the south.

They don't interact.

They rarely have a government, yet here they have all their ducks in a row.

So you know, Kudos, Belgium.

What this means is if we can have a small state, Belgium is not a power player going after

the shadow fleet.

And there's really no excuse for the bigger countries to go after it, as well as countries

that are closer to Russia, like say, the Baltics are sweetened.

So we are seeing a cracking in the shadow fleet left right in the center.

Number one, the United States broke the seal when it went after about 10 shadow vessels

that were taking Venezuela and crude.

Number two, we now have the Europeans gearing up to do the same.

The Brits look like they're on the verge, for example, of jumping into this and because

of the channel, that's pretty much everything that matters, and you get the Belgians and

the Danes and the Dutch and the Swedes, and then all of a sudden the Baltic Sea is shut

down.

Third, the war going on in Iran, Iran feared that this was going to happen, and so they

moved a lot of the crude that they had in storage onto floating cargo ships, basically

tankers that don't have a destination yet, and something like 200 million barrels.

That's a big chunk of the shadow fleet.

And all of a sudden they can't leave the Persian Gulf because of the war.

They're just floating there, and it's only a matter of time before the US Navy decides

to just go bop bop bop bop and confiscate all of them.

And when that happens, the shadow fleet will well and truly be dead, and the way that

something like 4 million barrels a day has been getting to market over the last couple

of years simply withers and dies.

So kudos, Belgium.

The Europeans are probably going to line up behind them with an a matter of days and weeks,

and the US Navy will be going after the shadow fleet undoubtedly within a couple of weeks.

The US Navy only really has enough ordinance on station for two weeks of a current tempo,

but here we are in day two, and they've already obliterated the Iranian Air Force and Navy.

So there's really nothing that Iran can do to protect the shadow fleet.

They're just basically sitting in a bathtub of the Persian Gulf.

So we're looking at the entire shadow fleet being wrapped up here in a matter of weeks

to a few months, which will generate entirely new energy market on a global basis.

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