Yeah, Michael?

Yeah, I was just going to say, it's a great quote, typical from the current US administration, using big words like from the bad guy fleet to the good guy fleet.

And this dark fleet tanker sanction news over the last two weeks has been a little bit interesting because...

When they came out and said that they were thinking about removing some sanctions on some tankers, you could see TD3C November prices in the second half of last week drop about 200 world scale points.

They've softened, call it another 80 world scale points now for November paper.

But your spot rates have only dropped about 75 world scale points.

And There's really no way that even if these sanctions were removed today for a material number of tankers, it wouldn't impact November business and shouldn't impact November paper.

So, Maite, what can you tell us about the freight market in the moment?

...add something now, maybe?

Yeah.

I-I've just seen a real uptick in the pace of VLCC fixtures out of the AG region.

And I say region just because that includes the actual Arab Gulf, but also the Omani Gulf and the Red Sea.

And just for example, so far, over Monday and Tuesday, I've seen at least, so these are the reported fixtures, I've seen at least fourteen VLCCs getting fixed, almost all of them heading to the east, and I believe it was ten of them are loading out of Fujairah.

What has been the immediate reaction?

Yeah.

It, it's been fun to watch, honestly.

You know, it's a side note, but yeah.

The workarounds are indeed impressive, and, and speaking of the shuttle trade, this is one of the reasons- Why VLCC freight rates have TCEs of over one million a day.

There's so many inefficiencies in the market right now.

And when you have ships that are just shuttling back and forth between the Strait of Hormuz and the Oman Gulf, one, that takes up ships, takes up time, but then also when you're having to SDS, that's not just a two or three-hour ordeal, I mean, it's gonna take all day.

So there's massive inefficiencies, and again, that's part of the reason, of several other reasons why VLCC rates are so high now.

And I also just wanted to mention again, if we, we go back to the UN General Assembly, the, the Iran committee and Steve Witkoff held their first public meeting.

Trump was quoted to say that it was very productive, and this quote, of course, took the crude market three or $4 off immediately.

Any other thoughts on the, on the freight market based on the, this discussion?

You know, it's a side note, but yeah.

The workarounds are indeed impressive and, and speaking of the shuttle trade, this is one of the reasons- Why VLCC freight rates have TCEs of over one million a day.

There's so many inefficiencies in the market right now.

And when you have ships that are just shuttling back and forth between the Strait of Hormuz and the Oman Gulf, one, that takes up ships, takes up time, but then also when you're having to SDS, that's not just a two or three-hour ordeal, I mean, it's gonna take all day.

So there's massive inefficiencies, and again, that's part of the reason of several other reasons why VLCC rates are so high now.

And I also just wanted to mention again, if we, we go back to the UN General Assembly, the, the Iran committee and Steve Witkoff held their first public meeting.

Trump was quoted to say that it was very productive, and this quote, of course, took the, the crude market three or $4 off immediately.

Any other thoughts on the, on the freight market based on the, this discussion?

An MR? China

as well.

Yeah, on an MR, which is super rare.

Super rare.

And then out of China, Meilao, I think it's the LR2 ARB, which makes a little bit more sense, but super rare to see an MR.

Yet to see a fixture on it, but I just checked again.

And then I wanted just to go back to the very beginning of what you were saying about the geopolitical updates and...

You need to pick which one you want to put your position on.

Then we can come back to Russia because obviously it has a bigger impact on middle distillates and then we can move on to the middle distillate section.

It's a good segue because so TD6 is CPC to MED on a Suezmax and those rates have skyrocketed recently.

The risk premium now is huge to load any crude in the CPC area and owners are ballasting their Suezmaxes into the MED for that reason.

And because there's more demand now out of the Red Sea to carry your barrels north through the Suez Canal.

And what that's done over the last couple of weeks is it's cut the tonnage counts out of the U.S. Gulf Coast and out of WAF for Suez Maxis.

And people are now putting a lot more barrels on Suez Maxis instead of the AFRAs.

And AFRA rates had jumped materially and they started moving to Suez Maxis.

Book your flights for summer when we were in

What about the rest of the clean market? So do you want to just give us the lowdown on what you see globally?

Yeah, so the US Gulf Coast has been quite volatile in regards to MR clean rates.

The sell-off, the most recent sell-off, finished maybe 10 to 14 days ago.

And the market, TC14 market, started to move higher.

Part of this move higher in TC14 has been somewhat artificial because your earnings out of Northwest Europe are so deep in the gutter that no owner wants their ship to open in Northwest Europe because...

Lately, they've been earning less than 10K a day, where out of the U.S. Gulf Coast, you could be earning on a longer haul voyage, 45, 50K a day or caribs type voyage, 70K a day.

So the earning spread is quite large.

Anything else on the clean side? Or what about dirty?