Supertanker rates are surging again, for a second time this month, as a growing global glut is making more traders and companies look to charter carriers to store oil at sea and sell at a later date to profit from the market structure, shipbrokers tell Reuters . In addition, the Saudi pledge to start flooding the market with oil as early as this week is also driving up freight rates for very large crude carriers (VLCCs). Earlier this month, the Saudi-Russian oil price war sent supertanker rates surging as the shipping market felt that there would be a supertanker supply crunch in the coming oil supply deluge. The other reason for sky-high tanker rates was that traders and the trading arms of oil majors are looking to charter tankers for floating storage as the oil market structure has flipped to contango. This is the market situation in which front-month […]