Bimco expects crude tankers to strengthen slightly in 2025 while product tankers struggle.
But, the shipowners’ organisation said, all bets are off if the Red Sea reopens to mainstream shipping.
“Our demand forecast for both sectors is an increase of 2.5% to 3.5% in 2025, but the product tanker market will have to contend with faster growth of the fleet and supply,” Bimco analyst Niels Rasmussen said.
For crude tankers, the fleet is expected to grow 1.3% next year and 2.1% in 2026, alongside oil supply rising by 2.1m barrels per day in 2025 and oil demand jumping 1m bpd.
Product tankers are expected to see much higher fleet growth — 3.7% in 2025 and 7.3% in 2026 — eating into demand-side growth and causing substantial market weakness in two years.
The gap between supply and demand growth was calculated at four percentage points for crude tankers and 12 for product tankers.
In his forecast, Rasmussen assumed that 2025 would follow the same pattern of ships rerouting away from the Red Sea and Suez Canal, but that those waterways would be reopened come 2026.
“Should ships not be able to return to the Red Sea and Suez Canal in 2026, we estimate that the supply and demand growth gap would narrow to one and six percentage points for crude and product tankers respectively,” he said.
He also said the unwinding of Opec+ production cuts would increase tanker demand, but US import tariffs would hurt overall growth.
Bimco’s forecast hews closely to Clarksons’ 2025 and 2026 expectations, published earlier in the week.
The UK broker expects positivity for tankers next year before fleet growth catches up with product tankers in 2026.
It is “relatively positive” about the sector heading into 2025, in part due to the continuing Red Sea disruption.
On Thursday, Clarksons said VLCC rates weakened, falling 3.7% from Wednesday and more than 19% from last week to $31,300 per day on a fleet weighted average basis.
Its suezmax fleet weighted average gained 7.2% day on day as the assessment rose to $34,100 per day, a 3.4% jump from last week.
The aframax fleet weighted average was basically flat, adding 0.2% to $25,500 per day from Wednesday — a 8.4% drop from last week.
But there were month-on-month drops in all asset classes. VLCCs fell 24.1%, suezmaxes 24.5% and aframaxes 31.6%.
