From Dark Voyages to Defensible Claims: How Marine Insurers Are Closing the Evidence Gap
At a Glance Claims Teams Are Now Reconstructing, Not Just Investigating Claims teams in marine insurance own two things: the loss investigation and the pay-or-reject decision. In the pre-2022 environment, both were largely a matter of establishing what happened, verifying that the loss fell within the policy’s coverage, and processing accordingly. AIS records, cargo documentation,...
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Security Worries Reshape Russia’s September Oil Exports
At a Glance Russia Holds Crude Exports Steady as Falsely Flagged Tankers Disappear Russia shipped 142.7 million barrels of crude, clean petroleum products (CPP) in September, according to Windward analysis using Vortexa data. Crude made up 110.4 million barrels, a pace of some 3.7 million barrels per day, broadly level with the prior month, which...
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War-Diverted Traffic Is Reshaping NEOM’s Port. What Happens If Hormuz Reopens?
At a Glance A Port Not Behaving Like the Megacity It Was Built For By any reasonable metric, 2026 should have been a difficult year for the Port of NEOM. The megacity it was built to serve has been through a visible contraction. The Public Investment Fund wrote down the giga-projects by $8 billion at...
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Forty-Five Shadow Fleet Tankers Link to a Single Hong Kong Nominee
At a Glance One Nominee, Forty-Five Companies, Forty-Five Tankers Windward’s visual link analysis has identified 45 Russia-trading shadow fleet tankers connected through 45 single-ship Hong Kong companies to one beneficial owner. All but three share 19 different ISM managers with addresses in the same industrial cluster in the Azerbaijani city of Sumqayit. 42 of the...
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What Is the Shadow Fleet, and Why Is It So Hard to Count?
At a Glance There Is No Official Shadow Fleet List The shadow fleet, also called the dark fleet, refers to tankers and support vessels that rely on deceptive shipping practices to move sanctioned or high-risk commodities while concealing their true origin, ownership, or destination. That definition is broadly recognized in practice. It has no standing...
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