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LONDON—The cost of shipping Middle East crude to Asia,
the world’s busiest market for owners, may drop for a
10th day as cargoes expected for April fail to emerge.
Ship
brokers Barry Rogliano Salles and
SeaLeague
AS have this week said that hire rates may stabilize and
advance because oil-producing nations have completed
cargo loading programs for the first half of April. Most
of those have yet to materialize.
“Even if
the beginning of April starts good, it can quickly go
quiet and fall again,” Per Mansson, a tanker broker at
Nor Ocean Stockholm AB, said in an e-mailed note last
week. “We need more” April cargoes “to get rates to
turn.”
Indian
Oil Corp. Ltd., the nation’s biggest refiner, hired the
tanker Titan Aries at a rate of 75 Worldscale points,
according to a report last week from Barry Rogliano.
That’s 17 percent below the London-based Baltic
Exchange’s assessment of 89.84 points for a comparable
cargo to Singapore.
Titan
Aries, built in 1988, has one hull separating its cargo
from the ocean. The exchange’s assessment for
Singapore
voyages is for carriers built up to 20 years ago, of
which 73 percent are fitted with full double hulls.
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 metric
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 89.84
Worldscale points, owners of double-hulled very large
crude carriers, orVLCCs, can earn about $47,869 a day on
a 25-day roundtrip from Saudi Arabia to Singapore, based
on a formula by R.S. Platou, an Oslo-based ship broker,
and marine fuel prices compiled by Bloomberg.
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. (Bloomberg) |
