- The tanker charter price is sky high for vessels that will transport Russian oil despite the sweeping sanctions.
- Middle East and Asian buyers are looking to purchase aging oil tankers in order to transport Russian fuel.
- This year, the prices of 20-year-old Aframax tanks have nearly doubled.
Sweeping sanctions, boycotts, and restrictions on Russian oil have spurred opportunistic profiteering — market entrants are now snapping up aging oil tankers to ferry the fuel at a premium rate.
New ship owners, mostly from Asia and the Middle Eastern, are looking to raise charter prices for tankers to transport Russian oil. China and India, ReutersReport on Monday. India and China are now major buyers of the fuel after the European UnionOn December 5, the Russian government lifted its ban on imports of seaborne Russian crude oil.
Unnamed shipbroker told Reuters that ships can earn $80,000 per day in Mediterranean if they carry Russian crude oil. That’s as crude tanker rates have soared this year to their highest level since 2008 — other than a brief spell during the pandemic in 2020 when oil companies used the ships for storage of excess supply as demand slumped, per Reuters’ records.
Second-hand oil tankers are also on the rise due to high profits.
Prices for 20-year-old Aframaxes — the standard vessel size used for loading crude at Russian Baltic ports — have surged 94% from $11.4 million in January to nearly $23 million as of November 24, shipping data provider VesselsValue told Insider.
There have also been 161 Aframax sales so far this year — 5% more than the 153 sold in the same period in 2021, according to VesselsValue.
Five Aframax tanks were bought by a Chinese shipowner. Lloyd’s ListReports from August
According to shipping journal, the buyer spent $376 million on 13 tankers of various sizes in order to ship-to-ship transfer of Russian crude oil in Atlantic Ocean. The majority of the vessels were between May 2022 and July 2022, and were all at least 15 years old.
