The cost of shipping Middle East crude to Asia, the world's busiest route for supertankers, may rise for a second trading day because of reduced vessel supply. There are 65 very large crude carriers, or VLCCs, available for hire within the next 30 days, according to a Feb. 22 report from Paris-based shipbroker Barry Rogliano Salles. That's half the 129 ships for hire a month ago.
"The tonnage situation is quite balanced," Halvor Ellefsen, a broker at SeaLeague AS, said in an e-mail today. "There's definitely a chance" ship-hire rates will rise.
PTT Pcl, Thailand's biggest energy company, hired the tanker Tenki for 121.5 Worldscale points, according to a report today from Athens-based Optima Shipbrokers. That's 3 percent above the London-based Baltic Exchange's comparable assessment of 118.75 points for voyages to Singapore.
Tenki is fitted with a double hull to cut the risk of an oil spill. That makes it more expensive to hire than single-hulled ships. The London-based Baltic Exchange's assessment for voyages to Singapore is for tankers up to 20 years of age, of which 72 percent are fitted with full double hulls.
The exchange's benchmark assessment, for shipments to Japan, climbed for the first day in three on Feb. 22, advancing 1.8 percent to 115.63 Worldscale points.
Worldscale points are a percentage of a nominal rate, or flat rate, for more than 320,000 specific routes. Flat rates for every voyage, quoted in U.S. dollars a ton, are revised annually by the Worldscale Association in London to reflect changing fuel costs, port tariffs and exchange rates.
Hire Rates
Each flat-rate assessment gives owners and oil companies a starting point for negotiating hire rates without having to calculate the value of each deal from scratch.
At 115.63 Worldscale points, owners VLCCs can earn about $82,291 a day on a 39-day round trip from Saudi Arabia to South Korea, based on a formula by R.S. Platou, an Oslo-based shipbroker, and Bloomberg marine-fuel prices.
Frontline Ltd., the world's biggest VLCC operator, said Feb. 15 it needs $31,400 a day to break even on each of its supertankers.
Bookings for VLCCs sailing from the Middle East to Asia account for 47 percent of global demand for the carriers, according to New York-based McQuilling Brokerage Partners LLP. Shipments to the U.S. and Caribbean, the second-biggest market, account for 14 percent of demand for supertankers.
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