Oil tankers get ‘dirty’, ditching fuels for crude as rates boom

A spike in freight rates for tankers hauling oil has prompted a wave of vessels to join the lucrative trade, with dozens of ships switching their focus from hauling products to carrying crude across the world’s oceans.

In the first four days of this month, nine so-called long range-2, or LR2 tankers – the largest crude oil vessels that carry products such as jet fuel and diesel – switched to carrying crude oil instead, according to data from ship-tracking platform Signal Ocean. That brings the year-to-date tally of so-called clean-to-dirty switches to 35.