Earlier this month I gave a presentation to an invited audience of oil tanker owners. This in itself is not unusual. What was unusual on that particular day was the ballistic rise in oil tanker earnings. The freight market was spooked by US sanctions on elements of the COSCO ship owning behemoth, by Exxon’s refusal to hire any ship that had visited Venezuela in the last year, by US sanctions on Iran, by attacks on ships in the Middle East (it was an Iranian tanker that ironic

It was clear from the great majority of delegates to Cyprus Maritime 2019 that the shipping industry is serious about cleaning up its act. On my own panel at the event, Dr Sadan Kaptanoglu, President of BIMCO, reiterated her conviction that delivering solutions to meet the world’s environmental expectations is her priority, which makes it BIMCO’s priority too. I’m sure that most other shipping organisations are in line with the move toward environmental sustainability, while

Last week, before I went to Cyprus Maritime 2019, I opined in Macro Macchiato that, “with so much macro-economic confusion, predicting shipping markets is even more of a mug’s game than usual.” Even I didn’t expect the tanker markets to behave so unpredictably. They have reacted to an unexpected alignment of supply-side constraints. With COSCO Energy Shipping and National Iranian Tanker Company VLCCs out of the market due to US sanctions, around 70 Very Large Crude Carriers

Greetings from Cyprus, where today I am moderating a panel session entitled, Are Brighter Days Ahead for Shipping? As any market analyst or data scientist will tell you, the main influence on shipping markets remains global GDP. And, as I have been saying for years, within the global set of GDP data, the main influence remains the twin processes of industrialization and urbanization especially in developing markets. So I’m excited to hear the views of my illustrious panel on