Imperial Petroleum Company, a subsidiary of StealthGas, described the following current trends in the tanker industry create attractive market opportunities.

First of all, advances in technology, tanker modification, globalization and macroeconomic events are the main drivers affecting the global tanker shipping market and demand for shipping.

The tanker market remained under substantial pressure in the first ten months of 2021, as the impacts of the pandemic, especially in oil shipping, continued to affect the demand for tanker transportation.

As a result, demand in terms of deadweight tonnes (dwt) from crude oil tankers is expected to contract by 0.5% throughout 2021, while signs of improvement are expected to be seen in 2022, where it is expected demand for TPM from crude tankers to increase by 6 percent.

Also Imperial Petroleum projects product tanker demand in terms of dwt to increase by around 9% in full year 2021 supported by increased demand for petroleum products and by around 6% in 2022 as demand oil transportation will recover further and OPEC + production restrictions will ease.

Tanker

Imperial Petroleum considers the increase in the apparent scrapping activity in 2020 and the first 10 months of 2021 (11.92 million dwt in the first 10 months of 2021 compared to 3.45 million dwt in the full year 2020 and 3.35 million dwt in 2019) will be a trend that will continue in the long term, as it is estimated that 7.4% of the existing fleet in each of the main shipping segments is more than 20 years old.

Specifically, the company estimates that aging the tanker fleet in combination with stricter environmental regulations for ships to reduce CO2 emissions will result in limited growth in the fleet supply.