LNG

 

In Australia, Chevron has accepted the FWC’s offer to end the LNG strike and Freeport LNG has restarted after some unplanned outage with feed gas to the facility, while Japan reported that their monthly LNG imports has continued to decline by around 9.6% year on year. A mixed bag of news for LNG but on the freight side increased cargo requirement has meant that rates are again slightly bolstered as we continue the steady steam towards winter.

BLNG1g Aus-Japan rose slowly, gaining a few thousand to close at $192,523. There are reports of fixtures happening but with caveated availability or delivery windows, these have not pushed rates too much. The Atlantic market move in a similar fashion, BLNG2g US-UKCont rose by $13,473 to close at $196,442 while US-Japan BLNG3g saw the lowest gains of all three and closed at $224,834. All three routes with positive endings and sentiment in market high, the upcoming winter is expected to be quite fruitful for owners and brokers alike.

 

LPG

 

It was quite a week for LPG. Across the board of the previous highest 22 index publishing rates since 2004 12 of these have fallen in September of this year alone. The rates have risen quite a lot this week, as well with BLPG1 Ras Tanura-Chiba rising $25 to finish at $183.286 the highest recorded rate on the Baltic Index. This gives a daily TCE Earning of $175,838: a rise of $28,267, which was again the highest TCE earning that the Baltic has published since we began doing TCE. A busy market, especially ex-India where owners have almost picked rates out of the air and still have been fixed, coupled with a tighter tonnage list, has kept momentum up and the fixing window is now way out to when ships who are theoretically in the fixing window still have quite murky itineraries, which have the potential to cause some headaches down the line.

The US has copied a similar feat as the Middle East. The Baltic has published $249.714 for Houston-Chiba (a daily TCE equivalent of $154,213), a rise of $27.285 on the week but the highest recorded price ever on this run. September has been bullish throughout, but this final push up is a rise of nearly $50 over the month. Owners are capitalising on plenty of cargoes, along with huge delays in the Panama, resulted in continued product being pumped and cargoes chasing ships, suggesting that this bull run has not quite ran out of steam yet. BLPG2 Houston-Flushing has also risen, although liquidity remains less on this route. Rates gained $11.6 to finish at $135.2, giving a daily TCE earning of $162,421.