Unemployed Supertankers Are About to Get Junked on Asia’s Beaches
- Ship scrapping expected to increase in the coming months
- Earnings on benchmark supertanker routes turned negative
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Covid-19 is destroying the market for supertankers that deliver about a fifth of the world’s crude oil. The result is likely to be booming trade on the beaches of Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, where obsolete ships go to get blow-torched and sold for scrap.
Last week, the 1,200-foot vessels plying the industry’s busiest trade route -- from the Middle East to Asia -- effectively had to subsidize the delivery of cargoes because of how large the surplus of ships has grown.