The math on the longest oil voyage in the world just broke. Hiring a supertanker for the November US Gulf–China run now costs $80 million for a two-million-barrel cargo. The figure comes from shipbroker Simpson, Spence & Young on LSEG, reported by Reuters on October 9. That works out to $40 of freight for every barrel in the cargo. It is about 44% of a WTI futures contract: the MarketRadar snapshot put WTI at $90.70 on Friday morning, down 0.84% on the day. Back in February, before the US-Israeli conflict with Iran began, the same trip cost $8.60 a barrel. Traders who track the route told Reuters the arbitrage window — the price difference that made the voyage worth sailing — has now shut.
Asian refiners are adjusting in real time. Buyers in China, Japan and South Korea are being priced out of US barrels, and the cargoes are already being redirected toward closer suppliers.
Why it matters
The freight bill has gone from a footnote to the biggest line item in the trade. Brokers at Poten put the going rate for a very large crude carrier at $1.3 million a day. That is roughly 43 times the $30,000 a day the same ships earned in early January, and it adds almost $33 to the delivered cost of every barrel — about 27% of its value with Brent near $120. Dropping down to a smaller ship does not buy any relief. Trafigura paid $24 million to move just 600,000 barrels on the Aframax Torm Hilde to Japan — the same $40 a barrel. The pivot is already visible in grade pricing. Asian refiners are weighing Murban from the United Arab Emirates instead of US barrels, and the grade's premium over Dubai quotes snapped back above $11 a barrel on Thursday. One trading-firm analyst told Reuters that Murban now lands in Asia roughly two dollars a barrel under WTI on a delivered basis — the kind of margin that decides cargoes. June Goh, a senior analyst at Sparta Commodities, noted that the freight surge feeds straight into refinery gate costs. Product cracks — the margins refiners earn turning crude into fuel — will have to stay strong to keep plants profitable. The squeeze arrives on top of an oil market already rattled by the Hormuz disruption that drove crude higher earlier this week.
What to watch
- Whether Cosmo Oil's provisional $81 million VLCC booking for November 19–21 loading firms up — or fails like the $76–77 million attempts by SK Energy and Trafigura.
- Further releases from the US strategic petroleum reserve, which one shipping analyst says are keeping tanker demand firm and rates elevated.
- The Murban premium over Dubai quotes — above $11 a barrel on Thursday — now the live gauge of Asia's pivot away from US barrels.
- VLCC availability itself: rates on the US Gulf–Asia run and the Fujairah–East route are up more than threefold since mid-August, driven by inefficient ship-to-ship transfers around the Hormuz disruption and Atlantic barrels flowing east.
MarketRadar take
The table below is our own math, and it leaves US sellers with exactly one lever: price. Reuters' sources expect American offers to be cut to stay competitive, which squeezes the export arb rather than the freight market. The winners are shipowners collecting record daily rates and Middle East grades absorbing Asia's diverted demand. Our read stays bearish on US crude export flows — and on WTI relative to delivered Middle East grades — until tanker availability loosens or freight reprices.
| Cargo / route | Lump-sum freight | Per barrel | Share of crude price |
|---|---|---|---|
| US Gulf to China, VLCC 2M bbl, Nov | $80M | $40.00 | ~44% of $90.70 WTI |
| US Gulf to Japan, VLCC offer (Bloomberg) | $82M | $41.00 | ~45% |
| Middle East to East Asia, VLCC (Poten) | — | ~$33 | ~27% of ~$120 Brent |
| Pre-war baseline, Feb 2026 | — | $8.60 | — |
| Aframax to Japan, 600k bbl (Torm Hilde) | $24M | $40.00 | No scale discount |
