Supertanker rates hit record $1.1M a day as Hormuz crisis reshapes oil trade

The cost of hiring a supertanker to carry crude oil from the Persian Gulf to Asia has jumped twelvefold in a matter of months to a record $1.1 million per day, a spike that is redrawing the map of global oil trade and threatening to keep fuel prices elevated even if futures markets soften.

Bloomberg Opinion columnist Javier Blas laid out the arithmetic on September 21: at current rates, the freight bill alone for a Very Large Crude Carrier hauling oil from inside the Strait of Hormuz to Asia now exceeds $22 per barrel, up from roughly $2 a barrel a year ago. The benchmark TD3C route — a 270,000-tonne VLCC sailing from Saudi Arabia's Ras Tanura to China's Ningbo — first cleared the $1 million-a-day threshold on September 14 and was assessed near $1.2 million by September 17.energynewsbeat+2

Pipeline Damage Compounds the Crisis

The rate explosion traces back to the Strait of Hormuz disruption that began after U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran in late February, but a more recent catalyst has intensified the squeeze. Drone attacks earlier this month damaged Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline — a critical bypass route that had allowed crude to reach the Red Sea port of Yanbu without transiting Hormuz. With the pipeline down, Saudi Arabia has turned to costly ship-to-ship transfers off Oman's Sohar port to keep barrels flowing to Asian buyers.wsj+2

Those transfers are expected to handle approximately 2.5 million barrels per day in September, up from 1.4 million in August, according to Arabian Business, tying up shuttle tankers and further straining a global VLCC fleet of only about 925 vessels.arabianbusiness+1

Geography Becomes the Price

The Wall Street Journal News Corp ↗ 1.28% reported that Hormuz-loading freight now runs roughly $26 per barrel — about a quarter of the crude's value — based on Windward data. The result is a growing wedge between paper prices on futures screens and the actual cost of delivering physical barrels. While ICE Brent futures traded near $101–$102 on September 21, physical grades have printed far higher: Dated Brent was reported near $122 and Murban near $131 in mid-September.wsj+2

European refiners are bidding up North Sea crude to avoid the tanker bill entirely, while Asian buyers have been reaching for U.S. Gulf Coast, West African, Brazilian, and Guyanese barrels — cargoes that never transit Hormuz. Japan's increased purchases of American crude, Blas noted, are not a preference but "voyage math." Those longer-haul substitutions, however, tie up scarce ships for far longer voyages, feeding the very shortage that pushed rates to records in the first place.energynewsbeat+1

No Quick Fix in Sight

Brokers report that 2026 is the heaviest VLCC order year in half a decade, but deliveries cluster in 2028–2029. Frontline's ↘ 2.49% Lars Barstad told Blas the current market is "likely not the new normal," while acknowledging that strategic stockpile rebuilding and a post-war pattern of sourcing crude from farther afield will keep freight elevated. Until new tonnage arrives, the futures screen and the refinery invoice will continue telling two very different stories about the price of oil.energynewsbeat