Economists Develop Algorithm to Detect Russian Tankers Evading Sanctions in Arctic
Economists at the University of Calgary are investigating ways to identify Russian oil tankers falsely reporting their locations in the Arctic. The practice of manipulating a ship’s signal is known as spoofing, and it allows ships transporting Russian oil to bypass sanctions imposed on Russia following their invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Commercial ships often have an identification system onboard, known as an automatic identification system (AIS). This allows them to be tracked as they traverse the world’s oceans. However, Dr. Lucija Muehlenbachs, PhD, a professor of economics in the Faculty of Arts, and Ajornie Taylor, a PhD student in economics, say there are increasing reports that ships transporting Russian oil are finding ways to manipulate their AIS, in order to evade detection.
“A ship may actually be loading at a Russian Arctic energy terminal, while its AIS signal makes it appear to be hundreds of miles away in the Norwegian Sea to evade detection for transporting Russian oil,” explains Taylor. The importance of the Arctic has become critically important in the movement of oil tankers, as Taylor says the number of tankers in the region increased by 396 per cent from 2013 to 2025.
Predicting Spoofing Behavior
Taylor and Muehlenbachs are working to identify these spoofers and see how they are evading detection in the Arctic. They are also looking into ways to predict when a ship may manipulate its signal before it starts to do so. To do this, Taylor is looking at the AIS data and developing algorithms to identify common shipping lanes and patterns before they start manipulating their signals.
“If we can identify that, then we can have some probability of whether or not a ship is likely to spoof in the next few hours, which can be very beneficial to the Coast Guards and other marine regulatory bodies,” says Taylor. One of Russia’s major revenue generators — oil exports — have been under sanctions by G7 countries, the European Union and their partners since 2022.
Developing an Algorithm for Detection
The economists say Russia developed a fleet of ships that allows them to still transport their oil, sell it at a cost above that $60 per barrel and evade detection when they do so. These ships are sailing to India, China, Turkey and other Asian markets. “We think it’s important to monitor what’s happening in the Arctic, and we want to have a good way to detect this manipulation,” says Muehlenbachs.
“We can test our algorithm for detection because we can see whether tankers that are subject to the sanctions are behaving differently than other ships,” adds Taylor. The two researchers are developing this algorithm through funding from a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council grant, and they have also applied for an Alberta Innovates grant to make the algorithm a more marketable technology.
“Eventually, we want to be able to forecast this illicit behaviour, and exploiting insights from economics may allow us to do this well,” says Muehlenbachs.
Original Article: UCalgary economists developing algorithm to locate Russian tankers illegally transporting sanctioned oil in the Arctic — Ucalgary