War! What is it good for? Shipping, apparently

“Unfortunately whenever you have a conflict its positive for shipping overall,” Leon Patitsas, founder and ceo of Atlas Maritime told a conference at Nor-Shipping.

“Whenever you have geopolitical conflicts the price of oil goes up and if the price goes price goes up substantially then people are going to want to buy more oil and they’re going to want to build their strategic reserves

“If that happens then the costs of shipping are going to rise and it might be positive both for the offshore industry as might because it becomes more profitable to sell oil and its going to positive for the tanker industry as contango and people will want to store more oil,” he explained.

Hans Kjelsrud, head of shipping, offshore and oil services for Nordea believed that the LNG sector could benefit from the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

Looking back at history he commented: “If you look at the positive take the closure of the Suez Canal in 1967 that turned out to be a huge opportunity for shipping.

“Right now what is happening in Russia and the Ukraine which will probably lead to some sort of diversification of European gas supplies and that will ultimately benefit the LNG sector.”