Lloyd’s List: Light at the End of a Dirty Tunnel

“Poor crude tankers; everywhere they turn there are forecasts of doom that threaten to consign them to the dustbin of history. Even the International Energy Agency’s recent relatively upbeat take on a new-look oil trade over the next five years held few positives for crude tankers, also known as dirty tankers. Product tankers will steal the limelight as these trades grow, while crude trades will diminish, meaning only one thing for crude tankers. . . . First off, shipbroker Poten & Partners points to a recovery in the dirty tanker sector by 2014 as the glut of vessels eases. ‘Slowing deliveries, continued demolition and restrained ordering are suggesting further deceleration in dirty supply growth,’ the broker wrote in one of its tanker reports earlier this month. Highlighting this, six suezmaxes and five aframaxes left the fleet during the third quarter. This led to the dirty tanker fleet shrinking for the first time since 2010. The fleet could grow by just 1% in 2013. Today’s poor earnings for dirty tankers will aid recovery. Investors are being put off, thereby capping fleet growth and hopefully leading to better supply and demand balance, and thus to improved earnings. In the words of Poten, ‘asset class revulsion almost always provides opportunities.”