India's Reliance pays record $25M to ship Iraqi crude
Shafaq News- New Delhi
India's Reliance Industries has agreed to pay a record $23 million to $25 million to charter a supertanker to transport Iraqi crude oil, highlighting soaring shipping costs and a shortage of vessels operating in the Gulf, three shipping sources told Reuters on Thursday.
Reliance booked the tanker to load 2 million barrels of Iraqi crude at 1,200 World Scale, equivalent to about 12 times the benchmark freight rate. Before the US-Iran war began in late February, similar voyages typically cost around $2 million, or 0.8 to 0.9 times the benchmark rate. The tanker will be supplied by South Korea's Sinokor, one of the few shipowners that continues to operate through the waterway despite growing security risks.
Despite the record freight costs, the sources said Reliance is still expected to save millions of dollars because Iraq's state oil marketer SOMO is offering crude at discounts of $25 to $30 per barrel against Dubai benchmarks to encourage buyers to lift cargoes from terminals in Hormuz.
A day earlier, Reuters reported that shipping traffic through the strait had fallen sharply as markets monitored Iran-Oman talks on reopening the strategic waterway. Vessel-tracking data showed only 33 ships transited the strait between Monday and Thursday, down from 50 during the same period a week earlier.
Iraq's oil revenues have declined sharply this year. SOMO figures showed the country earned $18.679 billion from exporting 268.1 million barrels of crude in the first half of 2026, compared with more than 606 million barrels exported during the same period of 2025.
