LONDON—The cost of shipping Middle East crude to Asia may extend gains Tuesday after rising at the fastest pace this month as ship owners raise rental rates to exploit a lack of vessels for loading at the start of March.

There are about 59 very large crude carriers, or VLCCs, available for hire by March 21, according to a report Tuesday from Paris-based Barry Rogliano Salles. A month ago there were 110 for hire for the following 30-day period.

“The market picked up due to the lack of tonnage in the first half of March,” Nikos Varvaropoulos, a broker at Optima Shipbrokers in Athens, said in an e-mailed note from Shanghai Wednesday.

Reliance Industries Ltd., owner of the world’s largest refinery, hired the tanker Astro Corona for 137.5 Worldscale points for a voyage to India, according to Optima. That’s 9 percent above the London-based Baltic Exchange’s assessment Tuesday of 125.78 points for a comparable voyage to Singapore.

The exchange’s benchmark shipping rate, for voyages to Japan, advanced 5 percent, its biggest increase since January 31.

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 US dollars a ton, are revised annually by the Worldscale Association in London to reflect changing fuel costs, port tariffs and exchange 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 125.78 Worldscale points, owners of double-hulled VLCCs can earn about $94,134 a day on a 39-day roundtrip from Saudi Arabia to South Korea, based on a formula by R.S. Platou, an Oslo-based ship broker, and Bloomberg marine fuel prices.

Frontline Ltd., the world’s biggest VLCC operator, said February 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 US and Caribbean, the second-biggest market, account for 14 percent of demand for supertankers.

In a separate report datelined Singapore, Asian aframax charter rates may rise as increased fees to hire bigger tankers may push up prices for smaller vessels.

The rate to transport 80,000 metric tons on an aframax from Kuwait to Singapore dropped 0.7 percent to Worldscale 154.38 Tuesday, the first decline in 11 days, according to the London-based Baltic Exchange. Shipping a ton of fuel on the route costs $14.96, based on data compiled by Bloomberg.

Charterers in the region have resumed the hiring of aframaxes on the Middle East-Singapore route after a hiatus during the Lunar New Year holidays earlier this month. Rates, which dropped 2 percent during that period, rose more than 10 percent in the past 10 days. The rate increase for supertankers may support smaller tankers such as aframaxes, according to shipbrokers including Takeshi Ando at Matsui & Co. in Tokyo.

“There were lots of activities in the past two weeks so rates were pushed up,” Ando said by phone. “Very large crude carrier rates are rising and that may affect aframax rates.”

Very large crude carriers, or supertankers, can carry 2 million barrels of oil.

The rate to ship fuel on a VLCC to Japan from the Persian Gulf surged 5.4 percent to Worldscale 122.19 Tuesday, according to data on the Baltic Exchange. Hiring a VLCC from the Middle East to Singapore was 5.9 percent more expensive at Worldscale 125.78 Tuesday. That was the biggest gain in a month.

On the Indonesia-to-Japan route, rates to transport 80,000 tons of fuel may rise to Worldscale 160 this week from between Worldscale 152.5 and 155 last week, Ando said.

State-owned Kuwait Petroleum Corp. booked the tanker Stena Concertina to transport 80,000 tons of crude on March 19 from Mina Al Ahmadi in Kuwait to the Singapore-Australia region at the rate of Worldscale 155, Seatown Shipbroking Pte. in Singapore said in its report Wednesday. The cost is 0.4-percent higher compared with the rate cited on the Baltic Exchange. (Bloomberg)

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LONDON—The cost of shipping Middle East crude to Asia may extend gains Tuesday after rising at the fastest pace this month as ship owners raise rental rates to exploit a lack of vessels for loading at the start of March.