Recovery for European Shipowners?
European Shipowners may increase freight rates or renegotiate bunker clauses in the coming year in order to capitalise on lower crude oil prices and consolidate the recovery seen in 2015, reports ICIS.
Bunker fuel prices came down significantly amid lower crude oil prices but some shipowners have been unable to take advantage of this because of the bunker clauses they agreed to.
A bunker clause is an agreement between charterer and shipowner whereby the charterer pays for fuel at the port and then the shipowner reimburses the charterer for the fuel left in the vessel on its return, both at the current price of the ports involved.
“Bunkers are down 50% but I don’t think that the bunker clauses have been covering that so for sure owners will try to renegotiate them so they don’t have to pay [as much]. At the same time, even though freights have dropped a bit, bunker fuel has dropped more so [owners] are better off than they were last year and posting strong results,” one ship operator said.
“I think they’ll try and increase earnings next year [2016] by accepting a lower bunker clause or by pushing freights up,” a European market sources said.
