Eighteen of the world's largest maritime nations are warning that global shipping rules are fracturing. The Consultative Shipping Group (CSG) issued its first public statement in more than 60 years on Tuesday. Its members represent more than a fifth of global trade by tonnage. "These are not episodic shocks," the CSG said in a statement published by the Danish Maritime Authority. "They are signals of a structural shift in the operating environment of global trade."
The CSG's 18 members are Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, and the UK.
At the center of that shift is an unregulated shadow fleet. The CSG said these vessels operate "outside of standard insurance, safety and transparency frameworks," bypassing environmental and safety standards. "The result is a two-tier system, one governed by rules, the other by opacity, ultimately weakening both."
The insurance consequences of that two-tier system are already visible. The Caroline Bezengi, a shadow fleet vessel, struck a limpet mine off Oman's coast this summer while carrying roughly 800,000 barrels of Russian crude. It had no traditional protection and indemnity (P&I) insurance. No insurer came forward to fund cleanup costs. The Omani government has been left largely bearing the financial burden.
Since 2022, Western P&I clubs have progressively withdrawn from insuring vessels tied to sanctioned Russian oil trade. The gap has been filled by thinly capitalized alternative insurers. A shadow fleet casualty with no solvent insurer attached leaves the nearest coastal state holding the liability.
The CSG pointed directly to the Strait of Hormuz as proof of what fragmentation costs. "As the closure of the Strait of Hormuz demonstrates: When shipping supply chains fragment, the global economy fragments with it," it said. Iran's effort to establish a toll regime in the strait alarmed shipowners, who warned it would invite imitation at other chokepoints.
War risk premiums for tankers transiting the strait surged sharply after the February 2026 conflict, a shift that the marine war insurance market is still pricing into every renewal. More than 80 percent of world trade moves by sea, according to the CSG. A disruption at a single chokepoint reaches across hull, cargo, and P&I lines simultaneously.
The CSG called for consistent enforcement of existing international rules rather than a patchwork of unilateral actions. "Uneven application distorts markets and ultimately weakens confidence in global shipping as a reliable backbone of international trade," it said. The group urged all maritime nations to uphold the frameworks governed by the International Maritime Organization (IMO).
The risks aggregating around uninsured tonnage and contested chokepoints are no longer edge cases in renewal discussions or accumulation modeling. The shadow fleet's expansion is reshaping exposure across tanker war risk, pollution liability, and charterers' liability lines for underwriters who track sanctioned tonnage. The CSG's statement adds sovereign-level weight to risks the insurance market has been managing operationally for the past two years.
