Oil tanker rates are soaring in 2026, reaching multi-year highs due to growing supply, longer routes, and disruptions from sanctions and altered shipping lanes. The global supertanker market tightened at the end of 2025, with vessels making longer trips and new-built VLCCs picking up supply from producing countries.
Daily rates for chartering vessels have surged by 467%, with oil tanker rates hitting multi-year highs and continuing to rally. Shipbrokers and analysts expect rates to remain elevated this year due to geopolitical developments disrupting crude flows. Despite weaker commodity demand, vessel rates for transporting crude oil have remained strong.
Supertanker rates between the Middle East and China have hit five-year highs as traders seek alternatives to Russian crude. Rates for smaller tankers have also increased as traders turn to all available vessels to transport crude. Rates have further increased in 2026 due to sanctions on Russia and Venezuela, leading to more oil in floating storage.
Vitol and Trafigura are trading Venezuela’s oil with U.S. authorization, requiring more tankers to transport the crude. The Venezuela trade has shifted from illicit shipments to China to legitimate flows to U.S. refineries on the Gulf Coast. Vitol and Trafigura have started offering Venezuelan crude to refiners in China and India for March delivery.
The Baltic Dirty Tanker Index has surged by about 30% in early 2026, indicating strong tanker rates on global routes for crude. Despite a slight weakness in the previous week, supertanker markets have remained firm. Maersk has tentatively resumed the trans-Suez route connecting the Middle East and India with the U.S. East Coast.
Oil tanker shippers have yet to use the Suez Canal route due to security concerns, unrest in Iran, and U.S.-Iran rhetoric. Containership operators are cautious about resuming transits gradually. The normalization of these transits could offset any benefit from the redirection of Venezuelan oil, according to Fitch Ratings.
Read more at Yahoo Finance: Oil Supertanker Markets Stay Red-Hot as Sanctions and Rerouting Bite