Oil tankers sailing US-China route commanding US$60m for lease and it is crushing demand
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Asian refinery orders for US crude for delivery in November tumbled roughly 50% to between 24 million and 26 million barrels in October sequentially.
PHOTO: REUTERS
- US crude exports to Asia are falling as tanker costs on the Gulf Coast-China route hit almost US$80 million, making long-haul trade far less attractive.
- Asian refiners cut November orders for American crude by about 50% to 24 million to 26 million barrels, which could be a seven-year low if it continues.
- Freight costs, insurance, fuel, and ship-to-ship transfers in the Gulf of Oman are tightening tanker supply and squeezing US crude prices, Bloomberg said.
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NEW YORK – US crude oil exports to Asia are set to hit multi-year lows after the Iran war disrupted global shipping and pushed the cost to lease a tanker for the Pacific journey to a record of almost US$80 million (S$102 million).
Asian refinery orders for US crude for delivery in November tumbled roughly 50% to between 24 million and 26 million barrels in October sequentially, according to traders who asked for anonymity because they were not authorised to comment publicly.
If that pace of orders holds through the end of October, it would mark a seven-year low, based on ship tracking data from Kpler and Vortexa.
The tanker rate along the US Gulf Coast to China route has more than tripled since the US-Iran conflict erupted in late February to almost US$60 million as at Oct 22, according to Baltic Exchange figures.
Earlier in October, it touched US$79.6 million, an unprecedented ruction in a market where rates averaged less than US$8 million in the half-decade before the conflict.
As it stands, leasing the largest class of crude carriers for the 30-day voyage is equivalent to half the cost of building a brand-new vessel.
Those eye-watering rates do not include the cost of the oil itself, which is trading around US$100 a barrel.
“The main story right now in the market is freight rates,” Randy Hawkins, Valero Energy’s head of oil trading, said during a conference call with analysts.
Tanker rates are so inflated that refiners are effectively spending US$30 to US$35 to haul each barrel of crude from the Gulf Coast to Asia.
That is as much as seven times what they shelled out in 2025, Hawkins said.
To be sure, the end of the November trading cycle is not a hard deadline, which leaves some leeway for traders to snap up last-minute cargoes.
At least one market participant, who asked to remain anonymous, said Asia-bound US cargoes for November may recover to as much as 40 million barrels in post-cycle trades.
Vortexa, however, is sceptical that such a turnaround is imminent.
“We don’t currently see evidence of a near-term surge that would push those volumes significantly higher,” said Rohit Rathod, a senior Vortexa analyst.
The drop in Asian demand appears to be rippling across US crude pricing.
Export-bound Permian Basin oil was trading for 25 US cents above the benchmark futures contract at the Magellan East Houston hub as at Oct 21, down from more than US$3 six weeks earlier, according to Link Data Services.
Medium sour export grade Mars, which is pumped from deep water wells in the Gulf of Mexico and is similar to Middle Eastern crude, has seen its premium to futures plunge to US$6 from US$17.50 in late March.
Valero’s Hawkins said one factor hindering global tanker availability has been the increased use of smaller vessels to pick up crude in the Persian Gulf that are less likely to be hit by Iranian fire in the Strait of Hormuz.
Once they have traversed the waterway, their cargoes are transferred to larger vessels waiting in the Gulf of Oman.
“The inefficient process of this ship-to-ship transferring that they’re doing of crude oil in the Gulf of Oman is really tying up global shipping and requiring more tankers to move the same amount of oil,” Hawkins said.
Insurance rates and high fuel costs are also driving up freight costs, he added.
“The primary factor remains high freight costs, which continue to squeeze arbitrage economics for long-haul routes,” Vortexa’s Rathod said. “The incentive for Asian buyers to source from the US Gulf Coast has diminished.” Bloomberg