Persian Gulf Tanker Freight Rates Surge to 897% of Benchmark, Hitting Year-High
Alina Collins
A supertanker has been booked to carry crude from the Persian Gulf to India at Worldscale 897 — roughly nine times normal rates and a 2025 high — as three months of Strait of Hormuz closure left the region desperately short of available vessels.
How extreme is Worldscale 897?
A VLCC — a very large crude carrier, big enough to hold about 2 million barrels — was fixed at Worldscale 897 on the Persian Gulf-to-India route.
Worldscale is the tanker industry's standard pricing system: a benchmark rate is set annually for each route, and ships are booked at a percentage of that benchmark. Normal fixtures sit around the 100-point mark. This means → this deal priced at roughly nine times the normal level, the highest so far in 2025.
In plain terms = oil that normally costs one dollar to ship now costs nine.
Why did freight spike this hard?
The root cause is a severe supply-demand mismatch. The Strait of Hormuz — the Persian Gulf's only sea exit, carrying about a fifth of global oil — was closed for three months. Most shipowners redeployed their fleets to other routes long ago.
After the U.S. and Iran struck an interim deal last week and the strait reopened, buyers scrambled for tankers to move cargo that had been stuck since the Iran war broke out in late February. Gulf producers also ramped up exports. Demand surged, but the ships haven't come back yet.
This means → the spike is not about a demand boom. It is a supply-side fracture: repositioning vessels back to the Gulf takes weeks, leaving near-term availability razor-thin.
Who stepped into this trade?
The VLCC was provided by Sinokor, a South Korean shipowner that has been expanding aggressively in the tanker market since late last year and is one of the most active players in the Gulf.
According to a message Sinokor sent to brokers on Wednesday, seen by Bloomberg, the company offered the ship for loading at Iraq's Basra port by June 24 and said it would carry the cargo through the Strait of Hormuz.
This reflects confidence in the waterway's current safety — committing a fully laden supertanker to the strait is itself a market signal.
What comes next?
The single variable that matters: how fast the fleet returns. As more vessels reposition from other routes back to the Gulf, available capacity rises and freight should gradually ease.
In plain terms = how quickly rates come down is the most direct thermometer for the pace of Gulf supply recovery.
If rates remain elevated over the next two to three weeks, it signals fleet redeployment is slower than expected, adding friction to the region's supply comeback.
Content is for reference only, not financial advice.