Baltic Exchange: Maritime market highlights for last week of February

The Baltic Exchange, the world’s independent source of maritime market data, has issued its report for the last week, 27/2 to 3/3 of 2023, to provide information on the tanker market performance.

According to Baltic Exchange reports, highlights of Clean, VLCC, Suezmax, Aframax include:

Clean

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The Middle East Gulf has been stable by comparison to recent weeks.
West of Suez LRs have also been sedate this week.
UK-Continent MRs have been a little quieter this week, possibly due to International Energy Week in London monopolising people’s attention.
On the Handymax front, TC6 has suffered from limited enquiry and the index has dipped 47.5 points to WS184.38. Similarly, on the UK-Continent, TC23 has shed 71.25 points to WS180.63.
The US Gulf MR Market continued to demonstrate the volatile nature it has been displaying of late.

VLCC

The VLCC market had a positive week with rates (and earnings) improving on all routes.
For the 270,000mt Middle East Gulf to China voyage the rate recovered by 3.5 points since last Friday to W70.23, which shows a daily round voyage TCE of $54,600 basis the Baltic Exchange’s vessel description.
The rate for 280,000mt Middle East Gulf to US Gulf (via the cape/cape routing) is assessed 1.5 points higher at WS42.
In the Atlantic market, the rate for 260,000mt West Africa/China gained three points to about WS70.5, showing a round-trip TCE of $53,700 per day.

Suezmax

In West Africa, the rate for the 130,000mt Nigeria/Rotterdam voyage continued climbing and improved another seven points.
In the Middle East, the rate for 140,000mt Basrah/Lavera is up 3.5 points to almost WS66 with available suitable tonnage remaining elusive.

Aframax

In the North Sea market, rates for the 80,000mt Hound Point/Wilhelmshaven route increased by 26 points to WS180 (a round-trip daily TCE of about $75,100).
In the Mediterranean, the rate for 80,000mt Ceyhan/Lavera recovered by eight points to between WS180-182.5.
Across the Atlantic, the Stateside Aframax market continued to be propelled upwards.
The rate for 70,000mt East Coast Mexico/US Gulf rocketed 118 points to WS405.
For the Transatlantic route of 70,000mt US Gulf/Rotterdam, rates increased by 13 points to WS278 (showing a round-trip TCE of $83,500 per day) which may encourage some owners to ballast from Europe.