In the latest sign of recovering oil flows in the Persian Gulf, Qatar inked a deal with a Taiwanese refiner for the sale of a cargo of Al-Shaheen crude, Bloomberg reported today, citing unnamed trading sources.
The deal follows the sale of Marine and Land Qatari crude to an Indian refiner last week, the sources also told the publication. Bloomberg also reported that ship-tracking data showed a Gfreek-owned supertanker currently loading at the Al-Shaheen floating storage terminal. Separately, QatarEnergy is also offering a gasoline cargo for shipment in July, in further evidence that energy flows in the Persian Gulf are on the mend.
While this is good news for energy importers, the price aspect of that news is more ambivalent: as traffic ramps up, tanker rates have skyrocketed. According to Reuters, the cost of hiring a tanker in the Gulf has nearly doubled in just a week, jumping from around $106,000 per day to more than $190,000 per day.
For some very large crude carriers hauling cargoes through the Strait of Hormuz, daily earnings have surged to nearly $470,000—a level that would have seemed absurd before the war began. The spike in rates for the Middle East Gulf routes has also pushed up spot freight rates in other regions as the competition for who will line up most of their tankers outside Hormuz first is intensifying. One tanker has been provisionally booked to ship crude from the Persian Gulf to India at a rate that’s nine times the benchmark for the route, Bloomberg reported earlier this week.
On the other hand, oil futures prices are significantly down, with Brent crude dropping below $75 per barrel and trading at $72.58 at the time of writing, and West Texas Intermediate changing hands for $69.46 per barrel earlier today.
By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com
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