Baltic Exchange

The Baltic Exchange was founded in 1744 in London and operates as an independent shipping information exchange, publishing daily freight rate assessments across dry bulk, tanker and gas carrier markets. A panel of shipbroker members submits assessments daily for benchmark routes including TD3C (VLCC Middle East Gulf to China), TC2 (clean MR Rotterdam to New York) and TD15 (Suezmax West Africa to UK Continent). Singapore Exchange acquired the Exchange in 2016 but it retains independent editorial control over its index methodology.

The Exchange's shipbroker panel held its TD3C assessment flat for five weeks once the war reignited, before revising it upward on 17 July to WS372, a rise of just over a quarter on the number the panel had published on 3 July. That delay reflects how the panel works: assessors mark a route only once brokers agree fixtures have actually moved, and it took the IRGC's vessel strikes and the CENTCOM raid earlier that week to shift enough fixtures to justify a fresh print. The same panel widened its assessment of Gulf War-risk hull cover to a range of 3-10% of hull value that day, with 5% becoming the market norm against a 3-4% baseline in late June, a figure still well short of May's WS458.75 peak.

For European oil desks, Baltic tanker routes are the direct link between crude and product freight costs and refining economics. TD3C sets the landed cost of Gulf crude relative to European buyers, while TC2 determines whether The Atlantic clean-product arbitrage between Rotterdam and New York is viable. The shadow fleet's rising Russian-flag share, tracked by the Kyiv School of Economics to 21% of shadow movements in March, has simultaneously pushed the Exchange's dirty and clean tanker indices wider as conventional vessels avoid Russian-origin cargo.