A surplus of supertankers competing to haul 2 million-barrel cargoes of Middle East crude oil shrank over the past week on stronger Chinese ship demand. There are 5 percent more very large crude carriers, or VLCCs, for hire in the Gulf over the next 30 days than there are cargoes that need shipping, according to the median estimate of three shipbrokers, one freight-derivatives broker and one owner surveyed by Bloomberg News on Monday. A week ago, the excess was 9 percent. Chinese oil companies hired a dozen VLCCs to load at Gulf ports last week, according to records of shipping agreements on the website of Clarkson Research Services Ltd., a unit of the world's biggest shipbroker. That's 88 percent above their weekly average of 6.4 so far this year. Charter rates for the vessels on the benchmark Saudi Arabia-to-Japan route fell 1.5 percent to 88.78 Worldscale points today, according to the London-based Baltic Exchange. Last week they climbed 29 percent, the most since January.
