The statistic depicts the volume of crude oil that is imported or exported by seaborne transportation from 2010 through 2017. Globally, some two billion metric tons of crude oil was transported via waterways in 2017.
Seaborne oil trade
Oil is the fuel that keeps the global economy running. Worldwide production of crude oil rose from a little over 63 million barrels per day in 1988 to about 92.6 million barrels daily in 2017. Crude oil prices increased dramatically over this period. The spot price of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) jumped from around 14 U.S. dollars per barrel in 1988 to almost 100 U.S. dollars per barrel in 2018, when there was virtually no spread between WTI and UK Brent. In 2017, the spot price of a barrel of WTI stood at about 43 U.S. dollars.
While accounting for less than 10 percent of global oil production, the Asia-Pacific region is the largest consumer of oil; over a third of worldwide oil consumption is concentrated here. Consequently, main petroleum source countries such as Venezuela are beginning to look to Asian markets in order to offset the sharp decline in oil exports to the United States. U.S. petroleum net imports plunged from 12.6 million barrels a day in 2005 to 3.7 million barrels daily in 2017.
Where pipeline infrastructure between trading partners is limited, large oil volumes have to be transported by land or sea. The key passages for seaborne oil trade include the routes from Panama to China, from the Strait of Hormuz to Japan and from West Africa to India. Globally, around 1.93 billion metric tons of crude oil were unloaded from ships in 2016, slightly up from around 1.86 billion metric tons in 2015. The increase in seaborne oil trade is expected to translate into positive revenue growth for tanker builders such as General Dynamics-owned NASSCO. In 2016, crude oil tankers were the third most important vessel type in the global merchant fleet.
