The cost of shipping US crude to Asia has surged to a record as buyers scramble for oil supplies amid growing disruptions to Middle East energy flows, Bloomberg News reported.
Hiring a very large crude carrier, or VLCC, to move 2 million barrels of crude from the US Gulf Coast to China cost about $44.8 million on Tuesday, according to Baltic Exchange data, as reported by Bloomberg News. That was up from about $39 million a day earlier and more than double the roughly $17.8 million cost before the outbreak of the war in Iran in late February.
