World Running Short of Supertankers Threatens Long-Haul Oil Flow The soaring cost of moving oil around the world is making some long-distance crude trades uneconomical, threatening to disrupt flows at a time when fuel markets have never been tighter. The jump is being driven by a shortage of available supertankers. In some parts of the world, there are barely any of the ships — each the length of three football fields — left for hire. The squeeze is making faraway barrels less attractive and encouraging refiners to snap up supplies closer to home if they can find them. But for oil traders, the risk is that shipping becoming prohibitively expensive. They’re concerned that the higher costs make it unprofitable for some refiners to turn crude into fuels, deterring them from buying cargoes that have to sail over long distances, even when demand to make diesel and gasoline is strong. On the industry’s main benchmark route, very large crude carriers hauling 2 million barrels of crude from the Persian Gulf to China are earning upward of $1.2 million a day. Similar pressures are now spreading across the freight market globally. (Bloomberg)