The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - Belgium Seizes Shadow Fleet Vessel || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: March 9, 2026

The Belgian government has seized a tanker of the shadow fleet. With the United States, India, and now the Europeans intervening, it is only a matter of time – months at most – before the entire fleet is shut down. Join the Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/PeterZeihan Full Newsletter: https://bit.ly/40EeUk9

Everybody, Peter Zine here, coming from Colorado. It is the 1st of March, and today we're going to talk about Belgium. Earlier today, the Belgian government grabbed a Russian shadow tanker and escorted to port and opened a criminal investigation all in one. I've been watching the shadow fleet for, well, almost four years at this point. It's the primary way that countries like Venezuela, Iran, and Russia have been earning oil income while under sanctions. They put out a bunch of really old ships. they fake their papers, they give them fake insurance policies, and then they sail kind of under the radar. Of late, the United States has gone after the shadow fleet that was involved with Venezuela,

and now we have had several instances where Russian shadow tankers have been grabbed, some by the United States, one by France, which was then summarily released because the French, quote, didn't know how to prosecute, which made them look really stupid, but the Belgians apparently have figured it out, and they've already opened a prosecution. Now, I don't say positive things about Belgium. often. The weather is awful. The food isn't that great. The beer is questionable. The Dutch part of Belgium is in the north. The French part is in the south. They don't interact. They rarely have a government, yet here they have all their ducks in a row. So, you know, kudos Belgium. What this means is if we can

have a small state, Belgium is not a power player, going after the shadow fleet, then there's really no excuse for the bigger countries to go after it, as well as countries that are closer to Russia, like say the Baltics of Sweden. So we are seeing a cracking in the shadow fleet left, right, and center. Number one, the United States broke the seal when it went after about 10 shadow vessels that were taking Venezuelan crude. Number two, we now have the Europeans gearing up to do the same. The Brits look like they're on the verge, for example, of jumping into this, and because

of the channel, that's pretty much everything that matters. And you get the Belgians and the Danes and the Dutch and the Swedes, then all of a sudden the Baltic Sea is shut down. Third, the war going on in Iran. Iran feared that this was going to happen, and so they moved a lot of the crew that they had in storage onto floating cargo ships, basically tankers that don't have a destination yet.

And something like 200 million barrels. That's a big chunk of the Shadow Fleet. And all of a sudden, they can't leave the Persian Gulf because of the war. They're just floating there, and it's only a matter of time before the U.S. Navy decides just go, and confiscate all. All of them. And when that happens, the Shadow Fleet will well and truly be dead. And the way that something like four million barrels a day has been getting to market over the last

couple of years simply withers and dies. So kudos Belgium. The Europeans are probably going to line up behind them within a matter of days and weeks. And the U.S. Navy will be going after the Shadow Fleet undoubtedly within a couple of weeks. The U.S. Navy only really has enough ordinance on station for two weeks of the current tempo. But here we are in day two. And they've already already obliterated the Iranian Air Force and Navy. So there's really nothing that Iran can do to protect the shadow fleet. They're just basically sitting in a bathtub of the Persian Gulf. So we're looking at the entire shadow fleet being wrapped up here in a matter of weeks to a few months,

which will generate an entirely new energy market on a global basis.