Top-end tanker rates have hit levels that would once have been almost unimaginable, yet the executives gathering at last week's Splash Singapore tanker panel delivered a blunt message: lock in cashflow now, and assume nothing about how long today's distortions last.

Gus Majed, group CEO and founder of Paratus, opened the session by framing a market transformed by geopolitics, rerouting and extreme volatility.

"We are without doubt living in unprecedented times," Majed said, arguing that shipping routes are increasingly being used as instruments of political leverage. Predicting how long the disruption lasts, he added, is becoming progressively harder.

The commercial implications for owners are immediate. For Nitin Mathur, managing director – commercial shipping at Al Seer Marine, the danger lies in letting spectacular spot numbers obscure tanker history. He expects crude tanker markets to remain robust for at least another year to 18 months, with gas shipping potentially strong for longer.

"We totally believe in fundamentals. We cannot really rely on the markets being so irrational," Mathur said. His summary of the operating environment captured the panel's mood: "Markets are generally rational with occasional shocks. These days you see markets are shocking with occasional rationality."

Mathur also flagged the extraordinary cost of trading through dangerous waterways — sharply higher insurance and crew compensation among them — though he argued some risks resist voyage-calculation arithmetic altogether. "How do you price risk on human life really?" he asked.

The fracturing of the market into regional and product-specific sub-markets complicates forecasting further. Alan Hatton, CEO of Foreguard Shipping, sees considerably less volatility at the smaller end of the spectrum, where Foreguard operates stainless steel chemical tankers driven more by industrial logistics than speculative commodity arbitrage. He predicted high-teens daily returns over the next 12 months.

"For the foreseeable future, we have to think about things in different terms than we did before," Hatton said.

Christoph Toepfer, CEO of Borealis Maritime and founder of Borealis Tankers, was among the most cautious voices on stage. Quoting the ancient Greek maxim that essentially translates as "I know that I know nothing", he argued that predicting tanker markets beyond six to 12 months has become exceptionally difficult.

"We are the luckiest panel and the luckiest room if you look at what we are living through at the moment," he said. Borealis is making money from its European chemical tanker operations, and Toepfer described lending conditions as exceptionally attractive for owners. He still warned against extrapolation.

"Shipping economics 101 tells you eventually demand supply will bring the market down," Toepfer said. "The better the party, the worse is the hangover. We're having a hell of a party right now."

Tomoaki Ichida, senior managing executive officer at MOL Group and CEO of MOL Chemical Tankers, stressed how different this cycle is from previous tanker booms, pointing to geopolitical, structural and environmental factors all acting at once. His lesson from earlier cycles is to watch small changes before the larger correction arrives.

"We carefully need to listen to the noise in the market," Ichida said, recalling a failed charter negotiation just before the 2008 downturn that, in hindsight, became an early warning signal.

Andreas Michalopoulos, CEO of Performance Shipping, described a market where "all stars are aligned": an ageing fleet, strong demand for tonnage, and much of the incoming supply still several years away. Performance has resisted aggressive ordering and instead fixed vessels on medium- and longer-term charters.

"We basically build a war chest for the future," Michalopoulos said. Discipline, he argued, is now one of the hardest things for owners to maintain.

"It's all about standing still now," he said, describing the difficulty of sitting on cash while brokers keep presenting supposedly irresistible deals.

The panel repeatedly returned to the orderbook as the most conventional threat lurking beneath an unconventional boom. Mathur contrasted today with 2008, when owners fundamentally misjudged the slope of future demand. Today's danger comes from owners responding to disrupted trade patterns and spectacular earnings with another ordering spree.

Michalopoulos put it most starkly: geopolitical upheaval has created additional tonne-mile demand, but it has also encouraged owners to order more ships.

"We ourselves destroy our own market," he said. "That happens every time and in every market, not only in tankers."

The takeaway from Singapore is less about predicting when tanker rates turn than preparing for the fact that eventually they will. As Toepfer put it, today's extraordinary tonne-mile growth could continue for another two years — or unwind within three months.