A few days ago, we saw another crude oil cargo leaving Northern Europe with destination the US Atlantic Coast. While not that significant as a singular event, it gives us the opportunity to discuss a potential rising trade in the Aframax sector. It has been our position for a while now that it is very likely to start seeing more crude cargos from Northern Europe to the US East and Gulf coast and in order to explain that, we have to start by looking at the crude balance for both regions.
With a pandemic that doesn’t seem to slow ...
HSFO on the Rise
Nov. 13, 2020
As promised on last week’s highlight, we are interested in exploring the potential scenario of high sulfur fuel oil (HSFO) pricing very close or even at par with very low sulfur fuel oil (VLSFO) in the near-term. As we had predicted, VLSFO and not MGO became the fuel of choice after the IMO 2020 regulations took effect on January 1st. Despite, or better, because of that, scrubber installation became a “hot” topic during the time leading up to the transition as shipowners wanted to take advantage of the, at the time, expected high price spread between the two ...
A Surge in Drydocking (Vol. 2)
Nov. 6, 2020
One of the main topics of the weekly highlight for the previous month is coming back in the spotlight. VLCC drydocking activity in October surpassed even our previously elevated expectation, recording the highest level (40) in recent times. This did not come as a surprise since we have already discussed how very few ships went in for drydocking during the first half of the year amid a pandemic and very high freight rates. Despite our anticipation though, the numbers we saw for October are nothing short of extraordinary.
According to the latest available data, 40 unique VLCCs have entered drydock ...
