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LONDON—The cost of shipping Middle East crude to Asia,
at a four-month high, may have peaked as holidays in
Asia and Europe slow demand and oil companies allow
spare ships into the market.
Asian
oil companies may release surplus vessels into the
single-voyage, or spot, market as they perform annual
maintenance work and scale back refining operations,
Nikos Varvaropoulos, an Athens-based broker at Optima
Shipbrokers, said in an e-mailed note late Wednesday.
While
demand will probably be “quiet” for the rest of the week
because of holidays in Asia and Europe, the supply of
double-hull ships to load in May remains constrained, he
said.
Petron
Corp., the
Philippines’
largest refiner, hired the tanker World Lion for 180
Worldscale points, according to a report from
Athens-based Optima Shipbrokers. That’s 1.8 percent
above the London-based Baltic Exchange’s benchmark
assessment of 176.72 points for voyages to Asia, which
is at its highest level since January 8.
The
Philippine government has stipulated that Petron must
hire ships fitted with a double hull to cut the risk of
an oil spill. Such vessels are normally more expensive
to hire than single-hull tankers. The exchange’s
assessment is mainly based on bookings of double-hull
tankers.
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 hav
Wing to calculate the value of each deal from scratch.
At
176.72 Worldscale points, owners of double-hulled very
large crude carriers, or VLCCs, can earn about $144,746
a day on a 39-day roundtrip 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
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) |
