VLCC tanker rates hit 60-year high as US-Israel strikes on Iran reshape oil trade

The striking element is the scale of the freight-to-crude ratio: when shipping alone consumes more than a third of the barrel's value, the economics of long-haul Middle East-to-Europe crude flows change fundamentally, not marginally. The binding constraint appears to be vessel availability as much as routing, which matters because tonnage shortages tend to outlast the geopolitical events that trigger them. For refiners and trading desks, the open question is whether the dislocation persists into the next chartering cycle or unwinds as trade routes re-optimise.