The sharp increase in freight rates for oil transportation has made some long-distance supplies economically unviable due to a shortage of available supertankers.
Sea-news.az reports that this was published by the “Bloomberg” agency.
According to the publication, freight rates on some routes have tripled. Delivering oil from Houston to Asia, the world’s largest oil importer, currently costs about $26 per barrel, or $52 million per cargo batch.
This amount is equal to approximately a quarter of the value of WTI crude futures. Before the war in Iran, transportation costs accounted for only a negligible fraction of the cargo’s total value.
According to brokers and market participants, they have never faced such a supertanker shortage before. In some regions, the number of empty vessels has dropped to almost zero.
High demand for short-distance transportation is also manifesting itself in the European market. At a time when Brent futures prices reached approximately $110 per barrel, physical Dated Brent crude in Europe exceeded $131.
The shortage has also affected smaller-sized tankers. Asian oil refineries have begun using Aframax-type tankers with a capacity of about 700,000 barrels instead of supertankers for certain supplies from the US.
Meanwhile, for the transportation of oil from Atlantic ports, instead of one VLCC, two Suezmax tankers, each with a capacity of about 1 million barrels, are chartered. The daily earnings of Suezmax tankers have exceeded an average of $300,000.
