Ten-year-old VLCCs are now worth more than newbuildings for the first time on record, according to shipbroker Braemar, as several pre-2016 crude carriers have changed hands at $150 million or more while a new VLCC costs around $135 million to order.

The distortion has travelled deep into the fleet's age profile. Assessments from Xclusiv Shipbrokers show a five-year-old VLCC rising from roughly $145 million on 10 July to $172 million by 18 September — a gain of about 18.6%. Ten-year-old tonnage climbed from $115 million to $152 million, roughly 32%. The sharpest move sits at 15 years: values jumped from approximately $83.5 million to $135 million in little more than two months, a rise of about 62%.

A 15-year-old tanker is therefore worth roughly what a new one costs to contract. The explanation is not technical equivalence. Buyers are paying for time. A vessel already afloat starts earning immediately; a newbuilding exists first as a contract, a construction slot and a future delivery date. In the current market, that difference is worth tens of millions of dollars.

$200 million for a ship already in the water

Nothing illustrates the premium better than the reported sale of Pinios, a 306,000 dwt, scrubber-fitted VLCC delivered from China's Hengli Heavy Industries to Dynacom in 2026. Dubai-based Onex DMCC has been linked to its purchase for around $200 million, with the vessel renamed Promise. VesselsValue had assessed the ship at approximately $179.4 million, meaning the buyer appears to have paid a premium exceeding $20 million to secure near-new tonnage without waiting for a shipyard slot.

The pattern extends to older ships. Pantheon Tankers has reportedly sold the 2011-built, 314,000 dwt Sea Leopard for around $135 million — more than the roughly $131 million Clarksons put on a benchmark new VLCC at the beginning of September. From a conventional depreciation perspective, that makes little sense. From today's earnings perspective, it makes considerably more.

Earnings engine

The Baltic Exchange VLCC average reached approximately $722,946 per day on 18 September, against around $79,700 in mid-September 2025 — an increase of more than 800% in twelve months. The Baltic's TD3C assessment for the Middle East Gulf-to-China trade moved through the equivalent of $1 million per day during September.

Those headline figures require care. A time-charter-equivalent calculation is not necessarily cash earned by every vessel; individual fixtures depend on Worldscale, voyage costs, positioning, insurance, waiting time and whether the ship will transit the Strait of Hormuz. But the direction is undeniable: once a ship generates hundreds of thousands of dollars a day, paying another $20 million or $30 million to get it now rather than years from now becomes commercially rational. Availability itself has acquired a price.

Hormuz changed the equation

Iran's closure of the Strait of Hormuz on 2 March pushed Middle East-to-Asia VLCC rates to their highest level since at least November 2005, where the US Energy Information Administration's data series begins. Ships unable or unwilling to transit the area leave the effective trading fleet; vessels delayed in or around the Gulf reduce available capacity; alternative crude sourcing stretches voyage distances and lifts tonne-mile demand. The world does not need to consume more oil for tanker demand to rise — it needs oil to travel farther.

War-risk insurance has magnified the effect. Additional premiums for Hormuz transits climbed during the crisis to a reported 7.5–10% of hull value in high-risk circumstances — millions of dollars of extra cost per voyage on a $100 million ship. Yet at current VLCC earnings, crude carriers can sometimes absorb costs that would make the same voyage impossible for a smaller tanker.

Producers want their own hulls

Buyers now include national oil companies seeking transport security rather than pure investment returns. ADNOC Logistics & Services announced in August the acquisition of six modern secondhand VLCCs alongside five VLGCs in a $1.3 billion fleet investment, taking its VLCC fleet to 14 and specifically highlighting the near-term operational potential of vessels that can enter service rapidly. Trading companies have been equally aggressive: Onex has been linked through broker reports and sales registers to at least five VLCC acquisitions.

The catch

Shipowners are ordering VLCCs at a pace that will eventually cap these valuations. Veson Nautical counts 183 VLCC orders in the first half of 2026, against just 18 in the equivalent period of 2025. A buyer paying $150 million for ageing tonnage is effectively betting that exceptional earnings last long enough to recover the premium and that the ship retains residual value once the geopolitical and freight environment normalises. Neither is guaranteed. A 15-year-old VLCC remains a 15-year-old VLCC: steel condition, coatings, survey status and drydocking expenditure do not disappear because rates are high. At several hundred thousand dollars a day, buyers tolerate those liabilities; at $50,000 a day, they may look very different.

For now, the market has separated ship prices from the conventional link between age and replacement cost. When the 183 newbuildings arrive, Hormuz stabilises and insurance premiums fall, traditional valuation fundamentals are likely to reassert themselves — but until then, availability remains the most expensive capability in the tanker market.