🚢 Tanker Rates Soar to Record as Oil Crisis Becomes Shipping Crisis

Supertanker rates hit a record $1.4 million per day on Persian Gulf–Asia routes, surging 40% in the first week of October amid the Iran war.

Ship-to-ship transfers near Hormuz are tying up tankers, creating a global vessel shortage and driving up freight rates for VLCCs, Suezmaxes and Aframaxes.

U.S.–China crude shipping costs have soared to $76 million per cargo, roughly ten times pre-war levels, adding tens of dollars per barrel to delivered oil prices.

Supertanker rates soared in September to above $1 million per day on the Persian Gulf to China route—a record high.

The September record was soon smashed as freight rates soared by another 40% in the first week of October alone, to top $1.4 million per day on the Gulf to East Asia trip this week, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The increased flows of oil from the Strait of Hormuz, mostly thanks to ship-to-ship (STS) transfers in the Gulf of Oman, are tying up supertankers for weeks waiting for the transfers outside the Strait, limiting the availability of very large crude carriers (VLCCs) for the other global key oil trade routes, such as the U.S. Gulf Coast to Asia.

The inefficient oil loadings in the Middle East and the very tight supertanker market resulting from these have created a ripple effect extending to the market of smaller vessels, Aframax and Suezmax, whose demand and daily rates have also surged amid a shortage of supertankers.

Thus, the Iran war and the oil crisis has also turned into a full-blown shipping crisis, with record rates being smashed nearly every day. Sky-high rates add millions of U.S. dollars to the cost of a single crude oil cargo, further fueling oil and fuel prices.

The shuttle-shipping through the Strait of Hormuz is “very inefficient,” Russell Hardy, chief executive officer at the world’s biggest independent oil trader, Vitol, said at the Energy Intelligence Forum in London this week.

“We started this conflict with a crude crisis. Then it turned into a product crisis. Now we have more crude oil coming out of the Middle East, but it is turning into a shipping crisis,” Hardy added.

“There is really not quite enough shipping to go around,” the executive noted.

Rates on the U.S. Gulf-to-Japan route are skyrocketing and one supertanker has been reportedly offered at a total fee of $82 million for the journey, up by 50% from just three weeks ago, Bloomberg reports.

Commodity trading giant Trafigura has reportedly chartered a supertanker to ship crude from the U.S. Gulf Coast to China at a total fee of $76 million, a source with knowledge of the fixture told CNBC this week.

The $76-million tanker fee is ten times higher than $7 million to $10 million in pre-war times. This suggests the freight cost of the journey is now about $38 per barrel of oil.

🔗 https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Tanker-Rates-Soar-to-Record-as-Oil-Crisis-Becomes-Shipping-Crisis.html

🛢 Emergency Oil Releases Risk Draining the World’s Last Supply Cushion

The IEA is releasing another 100 million barrels of emergency oil and fuels, but global inventories are rapidly shrinking amid the prolonged Hormuz crisis.

The U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve has fallen to 282 million barrels, its lowest level since 1982, placing itself in the operational minimum of 250–300 million barrels.

Aramco warns the global oil supply cushion is dangerously thin, with inventories potentially taking two years to replenish once Hormuz reopens, leaving markets vulnerable to further shocks.

Earlier this week, the International Energy Agency, after consulting with G7, said it would release another 100 million barrels of diesel, gasoline, and crude oil. The release is part of a plan announced in March to release 400 million barrels of oil in response to the Hormuz squeeze. But there is a problem with those releases—storage is emptying.

When the U.S. administration began releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a flurry of reports followed, citing experts who warned the level of oil in the SPR was already low enough for concern, and any further draws would be risky. As of the start of October, the amount of oil in the strategic U.S. reserve stood at 282 million barrels, which was the lowest since 1983, following the latest release of over 9 million barrels. The releases are part of a 172-million-barrel release the United States committed to earlier this year.

The U.S. strategic oil reserve, however, is not the only one reaching minimum levels. Global inventories are on the decline, too. According to the IEA’s latest monthly oil report, from September, global oil inventories dropped by 95 million barrels in August, bringing the total draws since February to 507 million barrels, translating into 2.8 million barrels daily. The one piece of good news that the IEA had in that report was that OECD commercial inventories rose by 23 million barrels, offsetting a 19-million-barrel draw in strategic reserves.

However, the good news did not last long. Earlier this week, Aramco’s chief executive Amin Nasser warned that the world’s oil inventories were running dangerously low—and implied the prospect of refilling them was rather distant.

“The system is already straining,” Nasser told the Energy Intelligence Forum in London. “And, with precious little else the world can turn to, the supply resilience cushion is scarily thin.” The replenishment of drained inventories, Nasser noted, could take up to two years, and that only after the Strait of Hormuz reopens. While the world waits for that to happen, it is draining its inventories, exposing itself to much more severe supply shocks if the war drags on into 2027.

“IEA Member governments still have significant levels of publicly held emergency oil stocks – equivalent to around 1.1 billion barrels, including over 200 million barrels of diesel,” the agency’s head, Fatih Birol, said this week, following his meeting with agency members to discuss the new release of oil and fuel. “The IEA stands ready to release more of these stocks to the market if and when required.”

This was meant to reassure the market that there will be no shortage of, notably, diesel. However, it might well spark concern instead of allaying fears of shortages, because global inventories are also dangerously close to their operational minimum and that cannot be breached because once you breach it, you have no global inventory system.

The world has drawn over 1 billion barrels of crude from inventories since the start of the war between the United States and Israel, and Iran. Most of that came from commercial inventories, Aramco’s Nasser said this week. That leaves less than 6 billion barrels still in storage—and those 6 billion barrels are needed to stay where they are to keep the storage system functional. The world, it seems, has worn its oil supply cushion through.

No wonder, then, that a lot of countries, notably in Asia, are now in a race to build their oil inventories. Asia is especially vulnerable to adverse events in the Middle East because most of its oil imports come from the region. With that severely compromised, Asian economies, especially Southeast Asian ones, have been struggling to secure fuel for their economies and populations, and to keep them relatively affordable.

🔗 https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Emergency-Oil-Releases-Risk-Draining-the-Worlds-Last-Supply-Cushion.html

🇮🇷⚔️🚢 The IRGC Navy has published a new video of a 2nd oil tanker to hit a naval mine in the Strait of Hormuz

The IRGC however claims it is the 3rd such tanker to hit a naval mine but they only provided video evidence for two of these events.

@CIG_telegram

🇺🇸❌🇺🇦 The Trump administration is threatening to stop the PURL procurement system that provides Ukraine with weapons in order to press Kiev to halt its deep strikes on Russian energy infrastructure, according to officials in Europe.

The officials, who received calls from American officials on Saturday and Sunday or were briefed on them, said the US was lobbying European capitals and Kiev in an attempt to end the attacks on Russian oil refineries. The White House declined to confirm or comment on the calls.

The US message also threatened to cut intelligence sharing with Ukraine which enable its drones and missiles to find targets in Russia.

Purl is a NATO-managed initiative through which KIev’s allies purchase US-made weapons that are then supplied to Ukraine. The US does not make a financial contribution to the fund.

https://unwall.app/www.ft.com/content/68fd8c4f-6f34-4f6e-a52c-76f635164031

🇮🇷⚔️🚢 The IRGC linked Fars News Agency citing a message issued by the IRGC Navy says that all ships that attempt to cross the Strait of Hormuz with their AIS identification and tracking system turned off will be considered "enemy ships" and will thus be attacked.

🔗 https://t.me/farsna/467800

🇾🇪 ⚔️ 🇾🇪 Latest map of the military situation on the Taiz front

🔹 The Yemeni army forces and popular committees took control of Al-Misrakh district.

🔹 With the advances made, the town of Al-Misrakh and the areas of Al-Kalaibah and Najd Al-Qasim and the road between Al-Misrakh and southern Taiz city came fully under the control of the Yemeni army.

Currently, Jabal Al-Arous and Jabal Al-Sabr in southern Taiz city are the only areas still under the control of Saudi-backed forces.

📎 IWN