I spoke about this last year. Via Bloomberg
Tanker Giants Sprout From Nowhere to Keep Russian Oil Moving
“It is this new breed of tanker market players who have helped Russian oil to continue to flow around the world,” said Rebecca Galanopoulos Jones, senior content analyst at VesselsValue, a firm that tracks the prices of thousands of merchant ships. “The sanctions on Russian oil seem to have had very little impact on overall export levels.”
Basically, there was a panic (hey Zoltan!) saying there would not be enough ships to take the oil from Russia to China and India.
My thoughts at the time still apply:
I'm still struggling with the idea that the entire Russian oil export sector will be shut down because Russia (or China/India as a proxy) can't work out how to buy a VLCC… 2/2
— Damien Klassen (@DamienKlassen) May 2, 2022
The lesson? Commodity trading houses exist partly to bring buyers and sellers together, partly for arbitrage and partly to allow various parties to skirt regulations.
If it is not explicitly banned, the profit motive will find a way.