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Insights 📈

Oil 🛢️

• Humbled By Hurricanes (Link)
• Decline in Crude Oil Shipments to China Amid Economic Shifts and Strategic Stockpiling (Link)
• Lukoil Effectively No Longer Able to Transport Crude via Ukraine (Link)
• The Workhorse Powering the Oil Trades (Link)

Dry 🚢

• Sugar Prices Should Recover Amid Lower Demand for Seaborne Transportation (Link)
• US Steel – A Political Hot Potato (Link)
• Weekly Dry Shipping Recap (Link)

Other 🌍

• Has the Container Freight Rate Surge Peaked? (Link)
• Why Unmanned Systems are Having a Maritime Moment (Link)

Crowdstrike Outage & Hodeidah Attack: the Supply Chain is Quickly Disrupted - Windward​

Last week’s events once again proved how quickly the global supply chain can become unlinked, if only temporarily (this time).

Container terminals at ports around the world were shut down following the Crowdstrike global IT outage. Some companies operating at these ports were also affected. Oil facilities and a power station near Hodeidah port in Yemen were bombed, sparking fears of additional Houthi rebel attacks in the Red Sea.

And two large oil tankers collided near Singapore, the world’s biggest refueling port, with one of the vessels behaving in an extremely suspicious manner pre- and post-accident.

Crowdstrike Bug Temporarily Strikes Down Ports Worldwide

“Planes and cargo are not where they are supposed to be and it will take days or even weeks to fully resolve,” Niall van de Wouw, chief air freight officer at supply chain consulting firm Xeneta, said in a statement shared with CNBC. “This is a reminder of how vulnerable our ocean and air supply chains are to IT failure.”

The Crowdstrike software bug crashed Microsoft operating systems, causing the largest IT outage in history, and temporarily shutting down ports worldwide.

While air freight was most impacted, major ports – such as the Port of Houston, Port of New York, Port of Los Angeles, and the Port of Rotterdam – reported temporary disruptions, but quickly resumed normal operations. The Windward Ocean Freight Visibility solution found that no significant shipment delays occurred as a result of the CrowdStrike update, after reviewing shipments entering these ports from July 19.

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Other ports were affected, with The Loadstar noting that the ports of Felixstowe, Tilbury, and Poland’s Baltic Hub (formerly known as DCT Gdansk), all suffered major IT outages.

2024 has already been a tough year for port congestion, so any disruption could easily cause major issues, according to Emily Stausbøll, Xeneta senior shipping analyst.

“She noted that in May, Charleston Port on the U.S. East Coast shut for two days due to a software failure, which resulted in a port congestion increase of 200%. ‘Port congestion has been a major problem during 2024. While it is now easing, there is no slack in the system and any disruption will push the needle back into the red,’ she said.”

Sluggish Crude Demand in Europe Continues - Vortexa​

As of 22nd July, Europe’s seaborne crude/condensate imports in July (days 1-31) are observed at 10.5mbd, the lowest level since October 2021. It represents a 100kbd m-o-m decline and 1mbd y-o-y decline. This decline in crude import demand comes at a time where imports would be expected to be higher in the year, given its the summer season (peak demand).

Europe averaged 11.3mbd in seaborne crude imports across July 2021, July 2022 and July 2023, highlighting that Europe’s current imports are 800kbd below that reference. One factor driving this decline could be weakness in diesel cracks compared to recent years, which were assessed at $15/bl as of 22nd July, $13/bl lower than the same point in 2023 and $7/bl lower than in 2022 (Argus Media). On the other hand, these cracks may have been higher as a result of sentiment of short-supply resulting from the EU-ban on Russian diesel, rather than market fundamentals. In the three years prior to the war (2019-2021), diesel cracks averaged $9/bl (Argus Media). Therefore, the current levels are still markedly above the pre-war average.

Another factor contributing to the weakness in Europe’s crude import demand could be Europe’s ample supplies in onshore inventories, which are 480mb in July. Although this is the highest level observed since February 2023, from a seasonal perspective, these levels are at the range expected at this time of year given refiners would be expected to produce more products (diesel, gasoline) for summer season. It’s 8mb higher than the same period last year but 10mb lower than levels observed in 2022, suggesting on average, European refiners have access to ample supplies to draw from, if needed.

Iran’s Tankers Double Down on Concealment Efforts Post-Sanctions - Lloyd's List​

It is no secret that tankers engaged in sanctions trades are masters at deceptive shipping practices, from manipulation of Automatic Identification System signals to document forgery. Those that end up under US sanctions usually double down on their manipulation of AIS, which makes tracking their activity — and the impact of sanctions — all the trickier.

What is clear though is that while sanctions raise cumbersome obstacles for tankers, they are not a kiss of death for their commercial endeavours.

Lloyd’s List tracked 11 tankers sanctioned by the US for Iran links between January and March and found the majority disappeared, manipulating their locations. Some hoisted false flags to continue trading.

Seven of the tracked tankers have emitted false location data via AIS since being designated.

Very large crude carrier Moonbay (IMO: 9230907), formerly Eternal Fortune, began manipulating its location just days after being designated on March 6.

AIS data shows the ship anchored off Vietnam from March 10 to April 18 The vessel is moving in an impossible pattern during this period, a telltale sign of AIS manipulation. Satellite imagery verifies the transmitted location is false.

Moonbay (IMO: 9230907) spoofing its location from March 10 to April 18:

Some tankers are still falsifying their location months after they were designated, pretending to sail in circles around the same spot, such as Sincere 02(IMO: 9226011), Molecule (IMO: 9209300) and Fortune Galaxy (IMO: 9257010).

This set of tankers routinely engaged in deceptive shipping practices prior to designation by Ofac, but this activity was more targeted to hide illicit activity, such as dark ship-to-ship transfer or port calls in Iran, rather than broadly trying to disguise their whereabouts over long periods of time.

In the lead-up to being sanctioned the 11 tankers were tracked with AIS data making some 116 calls to ports and anchorages in China, Iraq, the UAE and Malaysia.

While many of these calls were not legitimate, rather part of location manipulation techniques, the post-sanction activity remains a distinct shift away from these “normal” patterns with just 10 arrivals to ports and anchorages recorded, legitimate or otherwise.

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James Littlejohn

Co-Founder

Info@maritimedata.ai

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