By Alistair Holloway and Alaric Nightingale
Business ExchangeBuzz up!DiggPrint Email .A surplus of supertankers to carry Middle East oil is little changed amid a scarcity of cargoes.
There are 17 percent more very large crude carriers, or VLCCs, for hire over the next 30 days than there are likely cargoes, according to the median estimate of seven shipbrokers and two owners surveyed by Bloomberg News today. That compares with 18 percent on April 5.
“The long tonnage lists versus the projected remaining cargoes for April indicate no near-to-mid-term rate increases,” Dag Kilen, an Oslo-based analyst at RS Platou Markets, said in an e-mailed note today.
Charter rates on the industry’s benchmark Saudi Arabia-to- Japan route fell 0.6 percent yesterday to 54.53 Worldscale points, for a 44 percent decline in the past 12 months, according to data from the Baltic Exchange in London. Daily rental income from the route has declined 3.5 percent this month to $7,235.
The current return is 77 percent less than the $31,100 that Frontline Ltd., the world’s biggest VLCC operator, needs to break even on the ships.
To contact the reporters on this story: Alistair Holloway in London at aholloway1@bloomberg.net; Alaric Nightingale in London at anightingal1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Claudia Carpenter at ccarpenter2@bloomberg.net
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