High freight margins
Daily freight for the Oman-China voyage was assessed last Friday at $140,000, which translates into a per-tanker daily margin of roughly $110,000, said the second executive. Before the Iran war, a VLCC tanker generated $30,000 to $40,000 daily profit on a similar route, the executive added, with the conflict sharply boosting earnings from shipping oil out of the region.
Four COSCO-run supertankers and a fifth operated by CMES loaded oil via ship-to-ship transfers at Fujairah in July, according to Vortexa.
Between August and mid-September, about a dozen supertankers each controlled by COSCO and CMES are slated for loadings outside the gulf – mostly at Fujairah and at or near Omani ports primarily chartered by Chinese refiners, according to a ship broker.
In a sign of caution, Coslucky Lake, one of the last COSCO tankers to enter the Red Sea to load oil from Saudi Arabia’s Yanbu before the Houthis’ blockade, changed course in early August and sailed without cargo through the Suez Canal to load Saudi oil from Egypt’s Mediterranean port of Sidi Kerir, Kpler tracking shows.
(Reporting by Chen Aizhu and Siyi Liu; Additional reporting by Beijing Newsroom; Editing by Jamie Freed)