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birb_cromble  1d ago (text post)   484 thread views

Qeekly Finance Thread 2026-10-31

A weekly thread to discuss financial matters - from personal all the way up to global.

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Clearly this is still a very lucrative business. The threat for shipping firms isn’t really losing the value of a ship, though, it’s that lead time on new tankers is limited, production has been very low since oil prices cratered in 2014, and everybody who still makes them (mainly the Chinese) is at max capacity with no slack for years. Since anybody who has them is printing money right now, there’s also no incentive to sell or lease them to other firms except at prices / rates that negate much of the Hormuz profiteering bonus. So it is still a real gamble - whether or not you have insurance.

it’s that lead time on new tankers is limited, production has been very low since oil prices cratered in 2014, and everybody who still makes them (mainly the Chinese) is at max capacity with no slack for years

I'm almost there, keep going...

The setup for tankers isn't quite so positive unfortunately. There are quite a few deliveries coming the next 2 or 3 years. Normally this would only offset scrapping, but I don't think anything that floats will be getting scrapped in this environment.

But yeah, 15 year old ships are getting sold for the same price as it costs to build a new ship. (Ships normally last about 20-25 years). So the shortage is acute.

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