Oil tanker rates are set to stay elevated in early 2026 as crude supply is rising while the number of available vessels is shrinking due to the U.S. sanctions on Russia, Venezuela, and Iran, officials and analysts in the shipping industry tell Reuters.
The daily rates for chartering a vessel to transport commodities have surged this year, with oil tanker rates skyrocketing by 467%, as shippers of a growing commodity supply are grappling with a series of route disruptions and sanctions.
Despite the typically weaker commodity demand period toward the end of each year, the last weeks of 2025 don’t show any weakness in the vessel rates for transporting crude oil.
This year, the supertanker market has tightened as crude supply from OPEC+ and the Americas rises and vessels make increasingly longer trips. So much has the market tightened that several new-built very large crude carriers (VLCC) have made empty maiden voyages from yards in Asia to pick supply from producing countries in the Middle East, the Americas, and Africa, instead of loading fuels made in Asia on their first journey.
At the end of November, supertanker rates on the route between the Middle East and China hit their highest in five years as traders sought alternatives to Russian crude after the U.S. sanctioned Russia’s biggest oil producers and exporters, Rosneft and Lukoil. Rates for smaller tankers have also shot up as traders turn to all available vessels to transport crude.
“It’s a very strong market now,” Jan Rindbo, chief executive of Danish shipping group Norden, told Reuters.
Last month, Norden revised up its 2025 net profit guidance, “on the back of better-than-expected operational performance and rising markets.”
Supertanker fleet utilization, the rate of how many vessels are currently hired out of all available ships on the market, is set to surge to a seven-year high of 92%, up from 89.5% in 2025, per estimates by Jefferies analyst Omar Nokta cited by Reuters.
New-build tankers set for delivery in the latter half of 2026 could cap daily rates but for the next few months, it’s a tight tanker market with high shipping costs, analysts say.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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