It seemed that most of the first week in the MEG was quietly covered in the interim. West Africa/East activity, which suffered a slow start, has regained momentum, Fearnleys said in its weekly report.
Both MEG and West African rates were up slightly from levels last done, but further attempts from owners to raise the bar were so far met with the colder shoulder from the charterers - things were relatively stable, but further battles are likely up ahead, the broker said.
The Suezmax market enjoyed its first real spike of the year last week, as the market had been soft/flat for the first couple of months of 2015. There was a lot of deferred cargoes from end February into March loading patterns, and along with delays/ullage problems, particularly in Spanish ports, owners saw the opportunity to fix at higher levels.
The sudden firming of rates helped Med/Black Sea levels even though not much activity was seen. Looking forward, rates settled a bit after the spike, and we expect a correction, as we enter the second week of March fixing ex West Africa, due to more tonnage availability.
North Sea and Baltic markets softened even further this week. Going forward we expect North Sea cargo volumes to increase on the back of the VLCC berth at Hound Point being closed for maintenance.
However, it will take a lot of cargoes to remove the abundance of available vessels in this sector, so an immediate recovery in rates is not expected, Fearnleys said.
In the Med/Black Sea, the last week loading programme proved to be quite busy. More cargoes were coming into the market for end/early loadings and coupled with less availability of vessels with a firm position, owners were asking for higher rates to fix.
Going forward, we expect the market to remain firm for the week to come as the Black Sea and Ceyhan programmes were looking quite good.
Only a few fixtures were reported on brokers’ lists during the holidays. These included the confirmation that the 2006-built P-MAX ‘Stena Performance’ was fixed to Union Maritime for 12 months at $21,000 per day.
Mjolner was said to have taken the 2005-built Aframax ‘Sealoyalty’ for six months at $30,250 per day, while Reliance was said to have fixed the 2010-built MR ‘UACC Mirdif’ for 12 months at $18,300 per day.
In the S&P market, the 2007-built LR1s ‘Lorelei’ and ‘La Boheme’ were thought committed to Prime Marine at a price of $28 mill each, thus creating a new benchmark in the sector.
The 2006-built Suezmax Ocean Mare was inviting offers and was being negotiated in the region of high $20 mills, while the 2007-built Aframax BM Bonanza and the 2007-built Aframax ‘Isis’ were still for sale, although the latter was later reported sold for $32.5 mill to Singapore interests. Another Aframax was also circulated for sale - 2011-built ‘Dubai Attraction’.
The 1998-built VLCC ‘Front Vanguard’ was believed sold to Middle East interests on private terms, while the 1995-built VLCC size FSO was thought sold to Pakistan breakers for $245 per ldt.
The only newbuilding reported recently was an option declared on an MR to be built at HMD for CMM (Latsis) for $35.5 mill for 2017 delivery.
There were reports circulating that SPP was in negotiations with Indonesian owners for up to 10 MRs.