VLCC owners are recovering some lost ground in spot trade ahead of crucial Opec+ and G20 talks over global oil supply on Thursday and Friday.
With some cargoes emerging from the Middle East Gulf for loading later this month, shipowners have managed to push rates slightly higher on renewed market optimism, according to brokers.
“I see the rate rebounding. Owners are resisting [further falls] again…but the clock is ticking and [charter queries] for end-April loading are starting to appear,” one of them said.
Global average VLCC earnings were $139,100 per day as of Thursday morning, up 8.3% from a day earlier, Clarksons Platou Securities said.
The gain came after four consecutive business days of loss that saw VLCC earnings halved from a peak of $252,800 per day on 2 April.
But the number of fixtures remain low as most shipowners and charterers refrain from making firm commitments before the oil supply-demand picture becomes clearer.
Data from Tanker International shows 15 VLCC spot charters so far this week, compared with 27 deals for the whole of last week.
The latest fixture is for the 306,400-dwt Princess Alexia (built 2004), said to be chartered by IndianOil to lift from the MEG between 23 and 24 April for a shipment to the eastern coast of India at Worldscale 190.
TradeWinds has approached the Indian refiner for comment.
Crunch time
Faced with a collapse in oil consumption amid the coronavirus pandemic, Opec, Russia and nine other producers are set to have a video conference Thursday afternoon over a crude supply cut.
As their failure to form consensus triggered large floating storage needs and hikes in tanker earnings, an Opec+ deal would send a bearish signal to shipowners – but the extend of which remains to be seen.
If Canada, Norway, Brazil and the US are willing to join a global supply cut of up to 15m barrels per day, floating storage demand could be greatly reduced, according to some analysts.
Other said a reduction between 5m bpd and 10m bpd is more likely, suggesting lots of quantities of oil will still need to be stored at sea in the second quarter.
“I highly doubt that any production cut agreement can be made sufficiently large,” Banchero Costa’s head of research Ralph Leszczynski told TradeWinds. ”The storage play will undoubtedly be on in the coming months.”
While oil traders are betting on a large cut in early trading of Thursday, newswire reports said a deal could fall through if the US refuses to contribute to the reduction.
While saying domestic production is falling due to low oil price, President Donald Trump said the US would not be willing to join any formal pact, according to Upstream.
“ The Saudis and Russians might actually have an interest in dragging this on and letting low oil prices inflict maximum damage to the US oil industry ,” Ralph Leszczynski said.
