Oil tanker rates are soaring this year, picking up where they left off 2025—multi-year highs amid growing supply, longer routes, and disruptions due to sanctions and altered shipping lanes. At the end of 2025, the global supertanker market tightened as crude supply from the OPEC+ group and the Americas rose, and vessels were making increasingly longer trips. So much the market tightened that several new-built very large crude carriers (VLCC) made empty maiden voyages from yards in Asia to pick up supply from producing countries…