Saudi Arabia's state oil tanker company Vela has booked at least four vessels carrying up to 8 million barrels of crude for the US Gulf in the past two days, tanker fixture data showed Thursday. A further three tankers are scheduled to arrive in the US Gulf around the end of April, ship tracking data showed. Saudi Arabia ramped up shipments to the United States by 25 percent in the first quarter of this year to the highest level since mid-2008. A tanker broker said four very large crude carriers (VLCCs) had been fixed by Vela in the past two days headed to the US Gulf. Earlier this month Vela booked at least nine VLCCs from the Middle East Gulf to the US Gulf, the biggest such wave of fixtures in years. Shipments from the Kingdom to the United States jumped by nearly 300,000 bpd in the first quarter of this year to 1.45 million bpd, data from the US Energy Information Administration shows. Buoyant demand for VLCCs has helped push average earnings on the benchmark Middle Gulf to Japan route - the major market barometer - to their highest level in over a year to more than $40,000 a day, Baltic Exchange data showed. Saudi Oil Minister Ali Al-Naimi said last month high oil prices are unjustified and that the Kingdom would like to see them lower. Higher gasoline prices have cut demand in the United States to the lowest level for the month of January since 2001, data for from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) showed. Total US oil demand fell almost 4.5 percent in January from a year earlier, the statistical arm of the Department of Energy said in its Petroleum Supply Monthly report, declining by 853,000 barrels per day to 18.27 million bpd. The number was revised slightly higher by 169,000 bpd from an earlier estimate, but still illustrates the outsized impact rising prices have had on demand in the world's largest oil consumer, despite a modest recovery in the US economy. Gasoline demand fell 225,800 bpd to 8.19 million bpd, the lowest January demand in more than a decade. The figure was revised slightly higher from the previous demand estimate of 8.06 million bpd. Month-on-month gasoline demand was down by 472,500 bpd from December. The latest data means US gasoline demand has fallen by nearly 700,000 bpd since January 2007. “We're looking at a new era,” said Phil Flynn, analyst at PFGBest in Chicago. “There has been long-term demand destruction since the financial crisis that simply isn't coming back.”
