Oil Tankers Make Fortunes During War as Sinokor Dominates
(Bloomberg) -- The world’s oil supertankers are making unprecedented sums sailing from the Persian Gulf as Iran keeps attacking ships — with one South Korean shipowner in particular profiting from the situation.
Ships hauling cargoes from Saudi Arabia to China were pulling in a record $656,000 a day on Friday, more than ten times the rate a year earlier, according to Baltic Exchange data. There are signs that export volumes within the Persian Gulf are rising, adding to a clamor for ships to pick up oil inside the Strait of Hormuz. Few owners and crews are willing to risk the journey, meaning huge premiums for the companies that do.
The rate began to climb late last week when Sinokor Group, the world’s largest supertanker player, told market participants that it hired out ships at elevated rates, according to people involved in the market. Earlier this year the company, led by Ga-Hyun Chung, embarked on the biggest oil tanker bet ever, buying dozens of ships before the Iran war began and hiring them out at heightened rates.
The Iran war has roiled the world’s main oil tanker benchmark as the number of ships entering and exiting the Persian Gulf has become increasingly opaque. Before the conflict, shipowners and commodity traders relied on it as a proxy for global supertanker earnings, with substantial sums of derivatives also tied to the marker.
Moving barrels through Hormuz effectively comes with two shipping costs. There is a lump sum to get a ship through the waterway itself and then, once the cargo is switched onto a different tanker outside Hormuz, a lower rate based on an onward to China.
The cost of hiring a ship to sail from Oman to China is currently about $220,000 a day, compared with $131,000 a month ago.
“Looking at what we thought was the strongest market we’ve ever seen in 2004, we’re now twice that almost,” Lars Barstad, Chief Executive Officer of Frontline Management AS, one of the world’s largest supertanker operators, said on an earnings call on Friday, adding that average tanker earnings are skewed by soaring rates inside the Persian Gulf. “We’re way beyond what we’ve seen in previous years.”
TotalEnergies SE Chief Executive Officer Patrick Pouyanne said earlier this week that it costs about $20 million to move barrels through Hormuz. Two tanker market participants said that amount had risen further throughout the week.
In addition to higher volumes of oil moving out of the Persian Gulf, other shipping disruptions are also boosting earnings. Attacks on Saudi tankers by Yemen’s Houthis have seen the kingdom redirect some exports north, through the Mediterranean, and thousands of miles around Africa. That generally adds about 30 days to a journey to Asia.
The fact that ships are transfering cargoes onto waiting ships outside Hormuz is also disrupting the supply chain and making deliveries take longer.
(Updates with Frontline CEO quote in seventh paragraph.)
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