A sharp rise in the cost of transporting oil has made some long-haul supplies economically unviable, caused by a shortage of available supertankers. Bloomberg reports this.
The agency notes that freight rates on certain routes have tripled. For instance, delivering oil from Houston to Asia, the world's largest oil-importing region, now costs about $26 per barrel, or $52 million per cargo. This is roughly a quarter of the price of WTI crude futures. Before the war in Iran, transportation costs accounted for only a "minor share of the total cost" of the cargo.
According to brokers and market participants, they have never seen such a shortage of supertankers: in some regions, there are virtually no available vessels.
High demand for nearby supplies is also affecting the European market. With Brent futures peaking at around $110 per barrel, the price of physical Dated Brent crude in Europe exceeded $131.
The shortage has also affected smaller tankers. Asian refineries have begun using Aframax vessels with a capacity of about 700,000 barrels for some supplies from the US instead of supertankers. To transport oil from Atlantic ports, two Suezmax tankers, each with a capacity of about 1 million barrels, are chartered instead of one VLCC. Suezmax earnings have averaged over $300,000 per day.
