It now costs more than $348,000 a day to charter an oil tanker from the port of Primorsk to northwest Europe. Daily earnings for tankers shipping oil from Russia’s Baltic ports are soaring as shipowners continue to exercise caution about hauling the country’s crude. It now costs more than $348,000 a day to charter an oil tanker from the port of Primorsk to northwest Europe. That’s the highest since at least 2008, according to data from the Baltic Exchange in London. The increase is another sign of the discounts Russian producers will have to apply to their supplies in order to find buyers. Russian Urals crude was offered at almost $35 a barrel below the Dated Brent benchmark price last week, at a time when tanker earnings were about $100,000 a day lower than they are now. Assuming a freight cost of about $7 a barrel, it means producers […]