Soaring VLCC rates have not been enough for tanker owners to buck the trend of plummeting stock markets worldwide as coronavirus chaos prevailed.
Big tankers had added $100,000 per day on Thursday due to a fixing frenzy led by Saudi Arabia's Bahri against the background of an oil price war.
Tanker stocks had resisted falls elsewhere in shipping, instead gaining strongly earlier this week.
But as the Covid-19 coronavirus outbreak spurred US President Donald Trump to bar European travellers from the country for the next month, share prices took another hammering following a brief rally on Tuesday.
Belgian VLCC giant Euronav saw its stock slip nearly 9% in Brussels, losing $203m in market capitalisation, while Frontline was down 7% in Oslo and compatriot ADS Crude Carriers lost 2%.
Danish tanker owner Nordic Shipholding was down 13%, but compatriot tanker player Torm lost only 2% by comparison.
London-listed product tanker owner James Fisher was trading down 4.5%.
UK shipbrokers Clarksons and Braemar saw 4% and 3% cut from their values on Thursday morning in London.
Tor Olav Troim-backed bulker owner 2020 Bulkers lost another 11.5% in Oslo.
Of the 49 stocks tracked by TradeWinds, tanker companies were down 2.46% on average, with bulkers off 5% and boxships 2.5%. Nearly all owners were losing value.
But Oslo-listed bulker owner Belships added 1%.
Offshore vessel owners were losing value fast once again.
In Norway, the world's biggest owner of high-end ships, Solstad Offshore, was down 3.9%, with Dof losing 22.5%, Havila Shipping 13% and GC Rieber Shipping 10%. SeaBird Exploration came off 20%.
Gas carrier owners were down by an average of nearly 6%, with Hoegh LNG losing 4%.
The UK's FTSE index of 100 leading shares lost 272 points in early trading at 5,603.
But analysts said it could "smash into the 4,000s" on coronavirus fears.
The World Health Organisation formally designated the Covid-19 outbreak as a pandemic on Wednesday.
Oil war continues
As the world struggles to contain the outbreak, Saudi Arabia and Russia were staging their own private battle over crude.
The Middle Eastern kingdom is offering its flagship Arab Light crude into Rotterdam for roughly $25 a barrel, a massive discount to the price of Russia’s Urals.
European refiners including Shell, BP, Total, OMV, Repsol and Cepsa have all received crude allocations from state-owned Saudi Aramco significantly above their normal levels, Bloomberg reported.
One of Europe’s major refiners got double its usual allocation, one source said.
Saudi Aramco announced on Tuesday that it was lifting production to 12.3m barrels a day for April after talks broke down over production cuts among Opec+ members.
Meanwhile, after Wall Street was battered Wednesday, some shares were pointed toward further downward momentum in pre-market trading Thursday.
Cruiseship giant Carnival Corp saw its shares drop 9.9% to $19.60, which would mark a new one-year low, after losing 9.5% a day before.
In dry bulk, Golden Ocean Group's New York-listed shares shed 6.2% in pre-market trading, after closing Wednesday trading with a 3.4% slump.
