Its latest tanker market update said that 1.525bn deadweight tonnes of the combined crude and products fleet over 25,000-dwt is in the hands of public shipowners.
By contrast, 3.337bn dwt is owned by private shipowners, oil companies or traders, although a small number of those, such as BP, do have a stock listing.
The breakdown is similar on the newbuilding front with 282 million dwt of tankers booked now controlled public shipowning companies, the shipbroker said in a report.
This compares with the 526 million in the hands of private shipowners, traders and oil companies, Gibson data says.
The report examining different funding sources for shipowners said that private equity and hedge funds invested $7bn in shipping during 2014.
Gibson notes an estimate by billionaire Wilbur Ross that private equity put $16bn into shipping between 2008 and 2013.
This is approximately 2.5 times the amount raised by IPOs during the same period, Gibson said.
