Asia Oil-Product Tanker Rates

Asia Oil-Product Tanker Rates Trade Near 4-Month High on Korea
By Will Kennedy
May 28 (Bloomberg)

The cost of shipping gasoline and other clean petroleum products in Asia remained close to a four-month high as South Korean exports boost demand.

Rates to carry 30,000 tons of fuel on the benchmark route from Singapore to Japan have gained 49 percent to Worldscale 253.64 from March 11, when they were at the lowest this year, according to London's Baltic Exchange. Rates reached Worldscale 257.27 on May 17, the highest since Jan. 16.

Exports from refineries in South Korea to other Asian countries and across the Pacific to the U.S. have increased demand for tankers. Gasoline imports into the U.S. West Coast have averaged 96,000 barrels a day this year, more than double the amount in the year-earlier period. South Korea's plants can produce gasoline to meet California's strict emissions rules.

``Singapore has also seen a very stable week with 30,000 tons Singapore-Japan remaining at Worldscale 250-255 levels with little sign of change at the moment,'' London-based shipbroker E.A. Gibson Ltd. said in a May 25 note to clients. ``Korean back-haul cargoes have remained busy and continue to improve owners' returns in the Far East.''

The tanker Siteam Leopard was hired last week to load 30,000 tons of fuel in South Korea on May 27 and ship it to the U.S. West Coast, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The company hiring the ship or the rate wasn't given.

Three more tankers are scheduled to load 30,000-ton fuel cargoes each in South Korea this week bound for other Asian countries, Bloomberg data shows. These are called back-haul cargoes because they run against the normal pattern of trade from Singapore to Northeast Asia.

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