Platts proposes discontinuation of 9 Asia clean tanker assessments

Platts, part of S&P Global Commodity Insights, proposes to discontinue nine East of Suez clean tanker assessments, effective Sept. 1, 2022, due to a lack of spot liquidity in recent years.

With India and the US becoming net exporters of refined products in recent years, imports into these countries from the Red Sea have declined. In addition to a decline of flows from the Red Sea to the US, imports into the US from the Middle East have also fallen drastically.

Since January 2020, there have been zero spot fixtures observed on the 35,000 mt Red Sea-West Coast India route. When needed, India typically sources supply from the Persian Gulf or Singapore.

On the 30,000 mt Arab Gulf-USWC route, for example, only seven spot fixtures were observed since January 2020. When the US imports refined products, it typically sources them from places like North West Europe and North Asia.

Spot fixtures for LR1 tankers loading from Singapore to other parts of Asia have also fallen in recent years, with such flows of clean products typically occurring on Medium Range tankers, Platts understands. On the LR1 55,000 mt Singapore-Japan route, for example, no spot fixtures have been observed since January 2020.

The proposed discontinuation would affect the following assessments:

These assessments are published in Clean Tankerwire and Clean Tankerwire Monthly; on Platts Global Tanker Alert pages PGT2920, PGT2921and Platts Shipping Alert pagesSHP0320 and SHP0321; as well as in the Platts price database under the codes above.

Please send any questions or comments to shipping@spglobal.com and pricegroup@spglobal.com by June 3, 2022. For written comments, please provide a clear indication if comments are not intended for publication by Platts for public viewing. Platts will consider all comments received and will make comments not marked as confidential available to the public upon request.