Gibson Weekly Projects Report – 24 April

Dirty

Spot DPP earnings seem to have found a floor by the end of the week. Whilst such uncertainty persists it seems time charter activity in DPP will remain scarce, but the entire industry continues to hang onto every bit of news affecting the Straits of Hormuz hoping a re-opening occurs soon. The volume shift of tonnage to the West to load suggest there will be a displacement of tonnage when the Straits do re-open which would no doubt initially cause some steamy fixtures both spot and on period. But knowing when that might be appears to be guesswork for everyone. Considering the lack of AG volumes, returns have held up incredibly well, for now at least, with earnings still at healthy highs despite the disruption.

Crude 1 Year TC Rates ($/day)

Clean

Trading conditions for CPP MRs are currently exceptional. To put things into perspective, ships are still ballasting away on-spec from East Coast Aus-NZ range for Balboa despite being able to roundtrip in the East, at North of 40K PD. Eastern strength has forced Owners ideas north and is therefore making MR TC deals harder – mid 30s for 12 mos with a slightly forward delivery is a big ask. Likewise in the West, short term deals are hard to conclude given the front end strength. 3 and 5 year MR deals however, are being actively traded as Charterers look at lowering their average book exposures. Prompt TC angles for LRs remain thin, particularly for vessels that cannot trade BEM or the newly set restrictions of Fuj, Sohar, Duqm – as their trading options for both cpp/dpp are greatly limited.

Clean 1 Year TC Rates ($/day)

Time Charter Rates

Dirty Fixtures

Clean Fixtures

Tanker S&P

Values are chasing new highs across the sectors, prompt ships are key however, other buyers are backing off, concerned these earnings will not last for long. Samsung has been marketing 2 x resale Suezmaxes, which were originally ordered by a now-sanctioned entity. We understand there have been offers as high as US$120m each from Greek buyers, an incredible US$34m more than they were contracted for in 2023. Values are running extremely high as we watch closely the pending Japanese sale of the scrubber-fitted aframax, PUSAKA BORNEO (108,459 dwt / built Tsuneishi, Japan), which is believed to have seen US$ 78m offered earlier this week, building a little on the broadly 10% Chinese build price differential to last month’s scrubber-fitted GREEN ATTITUDE (112,532 dwt / built 2018 COSCO Zhoushan, China) sold for US$ 70m. 

Scorpio is certainly taking advantage of these incredible prices and has sold 3 x scrubbered LR2s, namely STI MADISON + STI PARK + STI SLOANE (109,999 dwt / built 2014  Hyundai Samho, S. Korea) for US$ 65 m each to reumoured Greek interests, alongside 3 x scrubbered MR2s, being STI AQUA + STI REGINA + STI OPERA  (49,990 dwt / blt 2014/2014/2014 in SPP, S. Korea) at US$ 35m each to Turkish buyer Besiktas Shipping, showing an improvement of a few weeks ago when they sold 1 year younger ships for the same price.                                                                                

Recent Sales

Tanker S&P Values ($m)

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