Product Tankers in 2016 and 2017
Freight earnings and asset prices are down on year and may fall further next year
According to MANA, Product tankers earnings have spiked across the globe in the final two weeks of the year, with market participants busy fixing vessels before leaving for holidays.The Baltic Exchange Clean Tanker Index closed this year at 678 points, showing significant improvement from 446 on December 13 and even up from the year-ago level of 580.
The year-end figure might be misleading, though, as the 2016 market is mostly overshadowed by a large number of newbuilding deliveries, limited scrapping and low trading activity due to high product stocks.
Danish Ship Finance has forecast that product tanker demand will end up growing 4% this year, already higher than the 1.8% growth in global demand for refined oil products but still lower than the 6% net fleet expansion.
According to Baltic Exchange assessments, earnings of long range one tankers averaged $15,006 per day and those of LR2s averaged $12,290 on the benchmark Middle East-Japan route in 2016, both of them 48% lower on year.Looking forward, many analysts predict that the 2017 market will likely remain plagued by continued newbuilding deliveries and stock drawdowns.