[ameribbean expat]

I guess when one runs a website called “The Economic Collapse” there are certain expectations to be met in terms of content.

Here’s my beef: “Global demand for shipping is absolutely collapsing”.

Not true: lease rates on dry bulk carriers may be down, but that’s not the entire shipping market What’s the lease rate on tankers and what percent of the overall shipping market is that?

http://www.koenig-cie.de/en/content/vlcc-200000-320000-tdw

And if the price of oil is down (hardly grounds for an economic collapse to most consumers...), why are the VLCC — very large crude carrier— rates up. The price of the commodity they carry is down, but the daily lease rate is up. How can that be...it’s an economic collapse....

[voicereason]

And if the price of oil is down (hardly grounds for an economic collapse to most consumers...), why are the VLCC — very large crude carrier— rates up.

Some of the reports on the oil tankers state that many of the tankers are sitting for days/weeks waiting to be offloaded. China is supposedly at the highest reserve levels ever and simply has no additional storage space, hence the reason why tankers are not being unloaded. If true, tankers are still need to transport oil since the production levels have not decreased and ports of exit only have some much capacity to hold. Check out the following link: Oil glut deepens with 100m barrels at sea