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London: The cost of shipping Middle East crude to Asia, the world's benchmark route for supertankers, may halt an 11-day slump as owners order ships to slow to save fuel costs.
The average very large crude carrier, or VLCC, slowed two per cent to 9.97 knots over the past two days, a move that curtails fleet supply. The data include ships at anchor.
Profit excluding finance, crewing and maintenance costs, has dropped 76 per cent to $34,892 a day for the vessels since the start of July, according to data from the London-based Baltic Exchange.
"We're hovering around the bottom," Halvor Ellefsen, a tanker broker at SeaLeague in Oslo, said in a note yesterday. Owners are instructing captains to sail slower, he and two other shipbrokers said on August 5. The ship fuel price has advanced 41 per cent this year and cost $685 a metric tonne in Singapore yesterday. Since the start of July, it's down 1.9 per cent.
Sinochem, China's big-gest chemicals trader, hired the tanker Universal Peace for 95 Worldscale points, according to a report from shipbroker Bassoe. That is four per cent below the London-based Baltic Exchange's benchmark assessment of 98.94 points for a shipment to Asia.
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