Locator: 52050B.
Climate: proposals for new EU commitments to climate change are "dead in the water." Did anyone see this coming?
Hope springs eternal: At the next global climate change conference, a group of African countries said they would be demanding a tripling of climate adaptation finance commitments at the COP31. The demands are expected to cause a stir at the climate conference that begins in Turkey on November 9.
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Back to the Bakken
WTI: $101.30.
New wells reporting:
- Sunday, November 1 2026: 0 for the month, 66 for the quarter, 565 for the year,
- None.
- Saturday, October 31, 2026: 66 for the month, 66 for the quarter, 565 for the year,
- None.
- Friday, October 30, 2026: 66 for the month, 66 for the quarter, 565 for the year,
- None.
- Thursday, October 29, 2026: 66 for the month, 66 for the quarter, 565 for the year,
- None.
RBN Energy: tight tanker supply sends shipping costs to frightening heights. Link here. Archived.
Forget ghosts and monsters. This Halloween, the scariest thing in the energy industry isn’t a one-eyed, one-horned, flyin’ purple people eater — it’s the tanker market, where a spooky jump in demand and frighteningly tight vessel supply have sent freight rates soaring. The culprit behind these hair-raising rates isn’t something lurking in the shadows, it’s a multi-headed monster of market disruptions: an unbalanced global fleet, mounting congestion in the Mediterranean, and a surge in vessel attacks. In today’s RBN blog, we look at how these forces are squeezing vessel supply and keeping freight rates at scream-inducing heights.
Here at RBN, we regularly track crude oil tanker voyages and freight rates but it’s not a topic that has taken up much space in our blogosphere until recently. To help make sense of it all, we turned to our friends at McQuilling Services, a U.S.-based shipping consultancy that tracks and forecasts the tanker market. This is our second in a series on freight rates. In Part 1, we explored how stronger demand for long-haul crude shipments, a tightening supply of available tankers and other factors have sent freight rates soaring, with little relief in sight.
The cost to charter a Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC) capable of carrying 2 MMbbl of crude from the Gulf Coast to Asia (red line and right axis in Figure 1 below) reached its highest point on record in early October at more than $80 million (equivalent to $40/bbl), although rates have fallen since then, dropping back below $60 million on October 21 and settling around $58 million on October 27. Prior to the start of the war with Iran earlier this year, the voyage cost typically ranged between $8 million and $14 million. However, once the conflict began and the Strait of Hormuz closed to normal traffic, freight rates became a lot more volatile. The cost to charter an Aframax from the Gulf Coast to Europe (blue line and left axis) has followed a similar pattern, dropping from about WS1,000 earlier this month to about WS720 over the same period. [Freight rates are expressed in total dollars per voyage or in Worldscale (WS) points, an industry-standard system that measures freight rates relative to a benchmark or specific route; for a more detailed explanation, see Part 1.]
