Tanker Weekly – 17 April, 2010
Baltic Dirty Tanker Index rose 1.8%; Baltic Clean Tanker Index decreased 1.8%. Similar as with crude oil markets the demand here is weak, but vessel owners are expecting firm May demand (firm is maybe an understatement). I’m skeptical.
Concerning floating storage, recent reports say that 40 VLCC’s or 7.5% of world fleet is used to store excess crude oil. Rumors say that Iran has 5 million barrels of crude oil stored on 20 tankers, with half of them being VLCC’s. This is significant because Iran crude oil is swing factor in the crude oil markets (because it is heavy and sour and because U.S. have banned imports); if demand would be strong the buyers would come to Iran to fill additional demand.
Chart 1. Baltic Tanker Indexes Relative Performance
Source: Bloomberg
Chart 2. Baltic Tanker Indexes
Source: Bloomberg