Ukraine fallout continues to support tanker freight rates

Freight rates for clean tankers—the specialist vessels that transport refined petroleum products—reached multi-year highs in 2022 and are likely to remain strong going into 2023

Clean freight rates saw “multi-year highs this summer… [that] remained elevated through November, driven largely by the effects of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine”, according to the EIA. Rates for the medium-range (MR) class of clean tankers—the most ubiquitous of product-transporting vessels—even topped those logged early in the pandemic, when the global slump in demand for refined products caused a spike in requirements for tankers to act as floating storage, the EIA states. Tanker freight rates are clustered around common shipping routes, which serve as indicators or even benchmarks for the cost of shipping more generally. "Since February 2022,” rates for voyages involving Russian