Hurricane season could provide a further boost to an already hot product tanker market.

BRS Group said in its weekly tanker note that low product inventories on the US east coast could hit “extraordinary levels” should a storm disrupt trading.

“Previous hurricanes have led to prolonged refinery outages on the Gulf Coast, reduced capacity or outages on the Colonial Pipeline and damage to storage terminals and port infrastructure across the Gulf Coast and Atlantic Seaboard,” the shipbroker said.

“Furthermore, a direct impact on shipping has come from vessel delays across the region. If a hurricane were to hit, it seems inevitable that transatlantic MR rates would soar from their already lofty $40/mt (TC2) and $48/mt (TC14).”

LRs would also get a boost as Europe would not be able to make up the difference in lost capacity, pushing the US to source oil products from countries like Saudi Arabia and India.

Already, BRS said, the US east coast is seeing issues with supply, with a lack of pipeline or rail capacity plus a small number of Jones Act tankers and 1.1m barrels per day in shut refining capacity since 2019.

It cautioned that hurricane season, which runs from June through November, has been the slowest in the last quarter-century, but that low inventories were cause for concern.

On Monday, the Baltic Clean Tanker Index fell four points to 1,238.

Its Atlantic MR basket fell $1,046 to $55,240 per day and its Pacific basket $933 to $62,234 per day.

Shipbroker Howe Robinson said it was a quiet start to the week on the TC2 route from Rotterdam to New York with only a single cargo available.

It said rates could fall further as vessels are ballasting to the region, adding tonnage that could weigh on rates.

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