The impact of crude oil price on the tanker market

Abstract

The demand for crude oil transport services is a derived demand, which is dependent on international trade of crude oil and crude oil carriers transport crude oil from producer regions to consumer regions. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between fluctuations in oil prices and the freight market (hereinafter referred to as ‘the tanker market’) using a structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) model. Referring to Kilian and Park's method of structural decomposition of fluctuations in crude oil prices, crude oil price shocks are classified into crude oil supply shocks and crude oil non-supply shocks in this study. Also, the response of the tanker market to different shocks is examined using the impulse response analysis. The empirical results provide evidence that crude oil supply shocks have significant effects on the contemporaneous tanker market. However, the impact of crude oil non-supply shocks is insignificant. In addition, the accumulated responses of the tanker market to crude oil non-supply shocks and crude oil supply shocks are positive but they are far lower than other shocks to the tanker market. Empirical results from this research are consistent with the fact of high crude oil tanker freight rates but low profits for tanker operators.