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Upturn in tanker market not seen until at least late 2018

Upturn in tanker market not seen until at least late 2018
An upturn in the tanker market is not seen until the end of 2018 as oversupply and newbuilding orders dog the market.

Speaking at Marine Money Asia in Singapore Kenny Rogers, head of Aurora Tankers Management, said that the freight rate environment in the tanker market was completely due to shipowners. However, Rogers said the market should improve by the fourth quarter of 2018.

George Bassakos, an S&P broker for Alliance Sale & Purchase said he was less optimistic. Bassakos said that the big problem was there were too many ships and owners kept on ordering vessels with over 200 tankers contracted this year, meanwhile scrapping was “undecided”.

“We need to stop ordering ships,” he said.

Jayendu Krishna, director – maritime advisers for Drewry, said that when they examined orders made this year they were not really replacement tonnage and rather there were “significant numbers” of new orders.

Domenik Nizet, svp tanker group for DVB Bank did not see a market recovering until 2019 into 2020 and that would still be dependent on owners not placing new orders. Adding a layer of uncertainty he said: “Then we will see what kind of black swans are coming in.”

However, with uncertainties regarding environmental regulations and low prices from desperate shipyards, owners might opt for newbuilding orders at say Chinese yards rather than buying a five-year old secondhand vessel if they had tonnage requirements.