Arctic: Shipping Daily - US-Iran MOU, Tankers, GNK, LNG

Research evidence excerpt

Arctic: Shipping Daily - US-Iran MOU, Tankers, GNK, LNG

● Timeline. The parties have 60 days, extendable by mutual consent, to negotiate a final

agreement, which is to be ratified by a binding UN Security Council resolution.

As we have highlighted numerous times in the past, the sanctions relief on oil and petrochemical

could be a real demand trigger for the compliant market. However, the big question is on how many

of the sanctioned vessels will return to the compliant market. To be continued.

Tankers: Hormuz hopes building

While rate movements remain modest, there is a distinct bullish sentiment shift taking place

in response to the US-Iran “deal”, which most tangible point is a dual commitment to reopen

Hormuz as mentioned above. Shipbrokers report of a marked upswing in period business, as well

shortening tonnage lists. Both shifts reflect charterers moving to be sure to be able to get a piece

of the pie as there are enough geopolitical red flags which still could derail the progress. Spot

rates for VLs and Suezmaxes in the Atlantic are ticking higher, while Aframaxes continue to lag, for

now. It is worth noting, however, that the owning/insurance side appears more skeptical about the

potential pace of reopening, with Mitsui OSK’s CEO saying yesterday that he expected that it would

take “several weeks” to build the necessary confidence for traffic to return to normal. On the clean

side, MR rates in the Atlantic continue to back off, dropping another -8% yesterday to USD 27k/d.

A Hormuz reopening would likely have less impact for this segment, given that refinery capacity

in the region has suffered damages which may take time to repair and that product exports is a

smaller share of the total than for crude. Ukraine drone attacks hitting two major Russian refineries