A shortage of available supertankers is constraining US crude exports, the head of the Port of Corpus Christi told Bloomberg on Thursday. For the first time in four years, not a single very large crude carrier entered the US Gulf of Mexico to collect an oil cargo last week, Chief Executive Kent Britton said.
Shippers are hiring smaller vessels and directing more cargoes to Europe, Britton said. The supertanker market has been in disarray since the US and Iran conflict stranded scores of vessels around the Persian Gulf.
The freight data agree with the direction. Site tables put tanker freight up 7.13 percent on the day, even though it remains down 13.11 percent on the week after the October spike faded. Dry bulk freight fell 3.01 percent.
The constraint is tonnage, not barrels. The IEA reported Gulf crude exports recovering and global supply back in surplus in October, and US commercial crude stocks built last week. What is scarce is the large ship in the right ocean at the right time.