In a weekly market briefing Omar Nokta, a forecaster at Clarkson Capital Markets, noted medium-range (MR) product tankers, for instance, are achieving returns that are similar to those of VLCCs trading in the spot market.

“Thus far into 2015 much of the attention on the tanker market has been on VLCCs, which are currently earning $45,000 per day on the spot market and have averaged a rather healthy $56,000 per day year-to-date,” he said.

“This