23 October 2025

Flag-hopping hits extreme levels

The monthly publication of Clarksons Research’s World Fleet Monitor increasingly shows data that reflects the extraordinary geopolitical challenges and machinations that shipping has to navigate in 2025.

With flag-hopping becoming standard operating procedure for the shadow – or parallel – fleet, monthly changes in registry numbers have never been so extreme as this year.

Latest analysis from Windward, a maritime analytics company, shows flag-hopping is at record levels, and that there are 12 fraudulent registries in operation, with over half of sanctioned tonnage flying under false flags. Windward data also shows that 57% of sanctioned tankers are falsely flagged or completely unknown in International Maritime Organization databases.

Benin’s ship registry has grown by nearly 50,000% this year

Splash has reported repeatedly in recent years on the sudden growth of many African registries in line with the growth of the shadow fleet moving Russian, Iranian and Venezuelan cargoes around the world.

Standing out this month, with the figures released yesterday through to October 1, is Benin, whose ship registry has grown by nearly 50,000% this year (see chart below). Iran has flagged VLCCs there, while French authorities last month detained the Boracay, a Benin-flagged aframax (pictured), linked to a drone invasion at Copenhagen airport.

Gambia also stands out in the latest Clarksons rankings, growing by 574% so far this year.

The Comoros Islands, which came from nowhere this year to enter the top 30 flag states by gross tonnage, overhauling the likes of the UK, has slid back over the past month from 9.9m gt in September to 7.8m gt after the government began a clean-out of its international registry.

In July, the European Union and the United Kingdom sanctioned Intershipping Services, a UAE-based company that operates the flag registries of Comoros and Gabon, another African flag strongly associated with the movement of Russian crude. Gabon has since seen its fleet size decline a great deal, as has Guinea-Bissau, another flag that took on much dark tonnage previously.

The see-sawing of flag tonnage numbers these days reflects the whack-a-mole realities authorities in the West have in trying to crack down on the dark fleet.

Other notable changes in the flag rankings are at the top of the league where Liberia now has built a more than 50m gt commanding lead over second placed Panama, and, come the next publication of World Fleet Monitor, Singapore will have leapt passed Hong Kong into fourth spot following Pacific Basin and Seaspan’s move from the Chinese city to evade the port fees being levied by the Trump administration in the US, another flag data change brought about by geopolitics.

The “weaponisation” of trade signals that shipping has moved from being a “neutral conduit of global commerce to a direct instrument of statecraft,” commented Greece’s Xclusiv Shipbrokers in a recent weekly report, adding: “ For owners and charterers alike, navigating this new regulatory battlefield may soon prove as complex—and as costly—as crossing any ocean.”