Brazil is emerging as one of the most promising tanker markets globally, analysts and industry data suggests, hiking crude production amid a lack of refining capacity.

Despite having the world’s third-highest number of coronavirus infections, Brazil has maintained its upstream operations this year and domestic fuel consumption is also recovering.

“We expect their [crude] barrels to prove rather significant for shipping, especially as most are exported to China with a rather long distance to be covered,” IHS Markit’s liquid bulk principal analyst Fotios Katsoulas told TradeWinds.