Entity designations have a well-worn counter: dissolve, re-incorporate, re-flag, resume. The elapsed time is typically under a month and the cost is legal fees.
Hull designations are harder to route around. A vessel has an IMO number that follows it through every re-flagging, every renaming and every ownership shuffle. It is the closest thing shipping has to a permanent identifier.
You can re-incorporate a company overnight. You cannot re-incorporate a hull.
The consequence has been a bifurcated freight market: clean tonnage commanding a premium, designated tonnage trading at a discount into a shrinking pool of ports willing to accept it, and a widening grey fleet operating on self-insurance.
The self-insurance part is the tail risk nobody is pricing. A laden grounding by an uninsured designated tanker in a strait is a cleanup liability with no solvent counterparty attached to it.
