Before Overseas Shipholding Group (OSG) can start making money again, the global product tanker market needs to pick up.

Sam Norton, the chief executive of the Jones Act tanker owner, said during the company's first-quarter earnings call on Friday that excess refined products from pandemic-stricken Europe was being shipped to the US on tankers available at bargain rates.

"Even though the US Jones Act is described as being insulated, isolated markets, they're really not," Norton said.