1. Russia, quite simply, was not ready from an infrastructure perspective, for this seismic shift in the [oil] market. They're maxed out of their infrastructure going East. They've modestly increasing ESPO capacity, and you're hearing about some modest volumes of crude by rail,
2. but ultimately you have a situation where you have ships in the Baltic and Black Seas doing ship to ship transfers, and going on a very long, inefficient voyage East. Russia is losing pricing power with its remaining customers, even beyond bearing the higher cost of freight
3. and insurance, and needless to say, the sanctions the economic pressure might make it even harder now for Russia to build this capacity going East. So this is the trend; the market is going to have to get used to this.
Maybe I'll live-tweet this, starting in 5 minutes: “HSBC Local Insights: Dry Bulk and Tanker Shipping Outlook: China reopening and Geopolitics”
One of my favorite analysts, Arrow's Head of Research Burak Cetinok will be sharing more of their superb graphics and charts.
Dry bulk started off the year very bad. We expect this to continue short term. But Chinese recovery should ramp up in Q2 and that's when we expect the dry bulk recovery to gather steam. Increased stabilization 2H and especially 2024.
There is a notable lack of consensus on the severity of the coming recession or economic downturn. The chart on the left (from Philadelphia Fed) shows that this is most anticipated recession in history.
But: Economists (including me!) are terrible at predicting things. 😂