Bloomberg Energy
West Africa
Part of the tanker freight-rate rally may be because of rising shipments from West Africa. Traders booked 33 cargoes of crude on VLCCs from the region this month, 43 percent more than a year earlier, according to data from Galbraith’s Ltd., a London-based shipbroker.
Angola and Nigeria, the region’s two biggest exporters, will ship 4 million barrels a day next month, the most since August 2012, loading programs obtained by Bloomberg show.
The cost of shipping crude to China from West Africa was $3.34 a barrel yesterday compared with an average of $2.52 this year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
An excess of VLCCs in the Persian Gulf shrank in the past several weeks, with 11 percent more of the ships available than cargoes, down from an average surplus this year of 17 percent, according to a Bloomberg survey of shipbrokers and owners.