The crayon marks on the wall of the sparsely furnished apartment hint at it being a conventional family home. But the single sofa, pink plastic chair and child’s bike obscure something else: a vital component in Russian efforts to circumvent U.S. energy sanctions. And it’s sitting 90 miles southeast of the Indian city of Mumbai.
Since June, the apartment has been the registered address of Ocean Speedstar Solutions. The Mumbai-incorporated company provides essential support to a Russian shadow fleet of tankers exporting liquefied natural gas from a flagship facility above the Arctic circle. On occasion, some of the vessels have disguised their location as they play a high-stakes version of hide-and-seek with U.S. authorities.
The apartment is lived in by Nikhil Ganesh Ghorpade, a photojournalist without any previous connection to the energy industry. He says he was persuaded by a friend to register his name and home address on behalf of the company and is listed by an official Indian registry as Ocean Speedstar’s sole director. By agreeing, he unwittingly joined a complex network stretching from Dubai to India and China which is being used to create a shadow fleet of gas carriers to ferry the fuel from Russia’s $21 billion Arctic LNG 2 facility.