Aframax Tanker Rates Jump 51% in Two Days

Kyeema Spirit, an Aframax tanker, image courtesy Teekay Tankers

Oct. 17 (Bloomberg) — The cost of shipping Russian oil to northwest Europe had the biggest two-day jump since April as traders accelerated bookings of tankers to load at the end of this month, curbing the number available for charter.

Rates for Aframaxes shipping 100,000 metric tons to Wilhelmshaven in Germany from Primorsk on the Baltic Sea climbed 51 percent to 113 Worldscale points, according to the Baltic Exchange, a London-based publisher of freight prices on more than 50 trade routes. That equals daily earnings of $47,168, almost three times what the ships made on Oct. 15.

Traders provisionally booked nine of the vessels to load in the month’s last five days, Timothy Clark, a shipbroker at Riverlake Group in Geneva, said by phone today. The rate of charters was higher than normal, he said. Shipments from the Russian port, the nation’s largest export facility for crude, jumped 25 percent last month and another 9.7 percent in October, according to loading programs obtained by Bloomberg.

“This week, everybody decided to climb in and fix,” Clark said, adding that some tankers may have been booked to take fuel out of Europe on long-distance deliveries, thereby limiting vessel supply.

Shipments of oil on Aframaxes from the Baltic will rise 5 percent to about 1.7 million barrels a day this year, estimates Clarkson Plc, the world’s largest shipbroker. The trade route is the second-biggest for the vessels, each able to hold about 650,000 barrels of cargo.

– Alaric Nightingale, Copyright 2013 Bloomberg.

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