Freight rate index soars 50% within 50 days! Shortage of oil tankers intensifies, six new giant tankers join the "empty running oil snatching" lineup.

Notice that the shortage of oil tankers is becoming increasingly severe, to the point that newly built ships that typically transport refined oil on their maiden voyages are now sailing empty, rushing to load crude oil as quickly as possible. Data from Signal Ocean's vessel tracking and chartering shows that six super tankers delivered this year have sailed empty from East Asia to the Middle East, Africa, or the Americas to load crude oil. In comparison, such voyages only happened once last year. Shipowners receiving new tankers almost always use them to transport gasoline and other fuels on their maiden voyages before loading crude oil. This makes sense economically and geographically: refined oil is cleaner than crude oil, so the ships don't need to be cleaned after transporting it, and many ships are built in East Asia, which imports large quantities of unprocessed crude oil and exports refined oil. However, the severe shortage of oil tankers is now disrupting this logic. This year, both OPEC and non-OPEC oil producers have increased production. Meanwhile, Western sanctions on Russia and risks in crossing the Red Sea have disrupted traditional routes, resulting in longer journeys and the need for more vessels. Smaller refined oil tankers are also being absorbed into the crude oil transport trade, and some traders have had to split cargoes due to a lack of large vessels, further driving up transportation costs. The Baltic Dirty Tanker Index, tracking the rates of transporting crude oil on 12 major routes, has jumped by 50% since the end of July. Georgios Sakellariou, a chartering analyst at Signal Maritime, stated: "When very large crude carriers (VLCCs) can earn $100,000 a day and Suezmaxes can earn $80,000 a day for transporting crude oil, people prefer to quickly lock in these rates to prevent them from disappearing." The "Aliakmon I" is the first super tanker observed this year to sail empty on its maiden voyage. It left a shipyard in Northeast China at the end of June without any cargo and then went to Kuwait to load nearly 2 million barrels of oil. This vessel, owned by Japanese trading company Mitsui & Co., then delivered the crude oil to South Korea in late November.