Chartering two Suezmax tankers to stand in for one VLCC on the Bab el-Mandeb run costs roughly $2 million more per voyage, and the passage stretches from 24 days to 54 by way of Suez or the Cape1. A VLCC, or Very Large Crude Carrier, hauls about two million barrels; a Suezmax carries around a million, so replacing one with two roughly doubles the vessels tied up per barrel moved.
TD3C, the Baltic Exchange assessment for the Gulf-to-China VLCC route that most desks read for this conflict, captures none of that cost, because it prices a different ship on a different stretch of water. When the Baltic assessed TD3C at WS372 on 17 July, it was quoting the direct VLCC voyage, not the Yanbu-Suez Suezmax pair-up that Saudi shippers now pay for. The marginal freight on the rerouted flow never reaches the screen the market watches.
That gap is the structural point. Mediterranean aframax rates had already jumped 198% month-on-month to $151,308 a day, so the freight complex was tightening before the reroute added a second Suezmax leg on top. A desk hedging its landed cost on VLCC indices alone is left exposed to a Suezmax basis it cannot see moving, on the majority of Saudi export volume now leaving through the Red Sea. The cost is small against a large flat-price swing, but it is durable and route-specific, and it accrues on every cargo for as long as the strait stays shut.
