Chinese oil imports hurt tanker trade in 2021.

A slow down in seaborne crude oil imports from China, the biggest market for tankers, has inevitably hurt the segment in 2021. In its latest weekly report, shipbroker Banchero Costa said that "the year 2021 was once again a very bad year for crude oil trade. Total loadings in the whole 12 months of 2021 were down -2.5 percent yo-y to 1,983 mln tonnes, excluding USA-USA cabotage, according to vessels tracking data from Refinitiv. This follows an even more dramatic -6.1 percent y-o-y decline in 2020. However, things did appear to improve steadily throughout the year, and...