Rental income from shipping Middle East crude to Asia rose for the first time in six days as oil companies began to make cargo bookings for next month amid speculation demand will increase and boost rates. Returns from the industry's benchmark Saudi Arabia to Japan voyage, the busiest route for supertankers, climbed 6 percent to $8,259 a day, according to the London based Baltic Exchange. Rates, which fell to a one month low on Tuesday, are down 79 percent this year. In the report, Pareto said: “The VLCC market bottomed this week the last year; stay ahead of the curve,” referring to supertankers, or very large crude carriers. The Baltic Dirty Tanker Index, a wider measure of crude oil transportation costs, declined 0.1 percent to 689 points. Rental income from suezmaxes, with a carrying capacity of 1 million barrels, dropped 12 percent to $6,376 a day. Aframaxes that transport about 600,000 barrels of cargo retreated 2.1 percent to $4,975 a day. With vessel supply still “far exceeding” demand and with reports that more supertanker operators sidelined vessels, rates may “linger at below $15,000 a day until mid-October,” Martin Sommerseth Jaer and Erik Nikolai Stavseth, Oslo based analysts with Arctic Securities, said in a report. The global crude oil tanker fleet will expand 4.4 percent this year and another 6.8 percent in 2011, DnB NOR Markets said in a report. Supertankers need $11,601 a day to pay crew, insurance and other running costs, according to London-based Drewry Shipping Consultants.
