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Persian
Gulf tanker rates may end gains amid Dec. slowdown
THE cost
of shipping Middle East crude oil to Asia, the world’s
busiest market for supertankers, may end a 15-day rally
as cargo demand temporarily slowed.
Refineries need to find about 15 more tankers to load
this month, leaving 15 to 20 carriers that haven’t found
cargoes, Tim Coffin, head of research at Capital
Shipbrokers LP in
London,
wrote in an e-mailed note on December 4.
Demand
will slow until oil companies start hiring the ships
they need to load January cargoes, known as stems, he
said.
Demand
was “extremely quiet” on November 30, Coffin wrote.
Still,
“it will take a long quiet period to dampen owners’
bullish sentiment with January stems just around the
corner.”
The
London-based Baltic Exchange’s benchmark assessment for
shipments to Asia climbed 0.7 percent to 172.81
Worldscale points on November 30, its smallest gain
since November 9.
Shipbrokers didn’t report any new vessel bookings.
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
172.81 Worldscale points, owners of double-hulled very
large crude carriers, or VLCCs, can earn about $142,384
a day on a 38-day round trip from Saudi Arabia to South
Korea, based on a formula by RS Platou, an Oslo-based
shipbroker, and Bloomberg marine-fuel prices.
Frontline Ltd., the world’s biggest VLCC operator, said
on November 15 it needs $30,000 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.
****
Stolt-Nielsen rises most in five years
after US case dismissal
STOLT-Nielsen
ASA, a chemicals shipping company, jumped the most in
almost five years in Oslo trading after a US judge
dismissed price-fixing charges against the company and
two former executives.
The
shares gained 17 kroner, or 12 percent, to 156 kroner in
Oslo, the biggest gain since February 26, 2003.
The
shares have declined 18 percent this year, valuing the
London-based company at 10 billion kroner ($1.8
billion).
The
Stolt Sun
tanker ship, owned by the London-based company Stolt-
Nielsen S.A., exits the Port of Le Havre, in Seine
Maritime, France on November 2, 2006. Stolt- Nielsen SA,
a tanker operator fighting US price-fixing charges, lost
a bid to stop a criminal case from going forward. The
company was accused of taking part in a conspiracy to
fix rates for trans-oceanic chemical shipments.
--Andrew
Wheeler/Bloomberg News
A
federal judge in
Philadelphia said on November 30, the Justice Department breached an
agreement not to prosecute Stolt-Nielsen or two
executives in return for the company’s cooperation with
its investigation into price fixing.
US
District Judge Bruce W. Kauffman rejected the
government’s contention that Stolt violated the terms of
the amnesty agreement by continuing to fix shipping
rates after March 2002.
Kauffman
dismissed charges against two former executives, Richard
Wingfield and Samuel Cooperman, who was chairman of a
Stolt subsidiary, Stolt-Nielsen Transportation Group.
****
Australia
considers refloating stranded carrier, ‘Herald’ says
AUSTRALIAN government officials is studying the best
option for refloating a 75,000-ton coal-powered bauxite
carrier stranded at a central Queensland port, the
Sydney Morning Herald reported, citing Maritime Safety
Queensland spokesman James Collins.
An
attempt by five tugs to refloat the fully loaded 255
meter-long vessel failed, the Herald said.
The
carrier was traveling from Weipa to the Queensland
Alumina Ltd. wharf at Gladstone when it stuck in mud on
December 2, it said.
Divers
who checked the vessel found it had not been breached
and authorities said there was no risk of pollution,
according to the newspaper.
The
bauxite cargo is from Rio Tinto Group’s mine in Weipa,
Nick Cobban, a company spokesman, said on December 3 by
phone from London, where the firm is based.
Bauxite
is refined into alumina, a raw material for aluminum,
used in car and plane parts.
Alumina
production in
Queensland
by Rio Tinto, the world’s third-largest mining company,
was unaffected.
“We have
enough stockpiles,” Cobban said. |
