Ignore the sector's dismal rates — the product tanker rally is still on.
On Tuesday, the Baltic Clean Tanker Index (BCTI) fell two points to 452, its 11th consecutive day below 460, territory it had not seen since mid-January.
But you would not know it listening to Marine Money Week's online product tanker panel, where owners were upbeat about the sector's prospects in the second half of this year.
"The vast majority of the world is improving, the developed world, particularly the US, is through Covid," said Ardmore Shipping chief financial officer Paul Tivnan. "On this side of the world, we're just coming out of it.
"We're continuing to just grind up, bit by bit, on the oil demand side."
Tivnan was joined on the panel by Torm chief executive Jacob Meldgaard, d'Amico International Shipping finance chief Carlos Balestra di Mottola and Scorpio Tankers president Robert Bugbee.
The quartet was confident good times were on the way for the sector with Bugbee, di Mottola and Tivnan expecting better than 6% growth in tonne-mile demand on an annualised basis, with Meldgaard predicting around 6%.
The product tanker market was rocked by coronavirus-driven lockdowns, destroying demand for oil products with people forced to stay in place.
The second half of 2020 saw the BCTI peek above 500 only once.
Bugbee said demand in the US shot back up as Americans began travelling again and said he reasoned the same thing would happen in Europe as Covid-19 vaccination becomes widespread there.
"There are analysts now thinking that oil demand by October will be back to pre-Covid levels," he said, predicting an MR could be earning $20,000 per day on average by then.
