Research on Supply-Demand Relationship of World Crude Tanker Transportation

In order to explore the supply-demand relationship of world crude oil tanker transportation, a model was established to calculate the ship utilization rate of world maritime crude oil network. Taking the year 2014 as an example, world oil trade was distributed to each route, and actual trade and fixture data were utilized to calculate the demand scale of three major ship types, i.e. VLCC, Suezmax and Aframax. It was proved that rapid price decline of world crude oil in 2014 propelled the surging demand of crude oil, which pushed the utilization rate of crude tankers to a high level, with the utilization rate of VLCC and Suezmax reaching over 80%. Further, vessel utilization rate of three types lying in different intervals explained the unequal extent of freight climb. The model can be applied to other years and monitor the supply-demand balance of world crude oil tanker market, and provides reference to judge the trend of freight in world crude oil market.