The dirty tanker market as a whole recorded the third successive weekly decline, although in the VLCC sector there are signs are that earnings might be nearing the bottom of the trough. Suezmax and Aframax sectors, though, continued their inexorable downward momentum.The clean tanker market has also declined for the past three weeks, but much less abruptly. At the start of the week, crude oil prices reached a 'money of the day' peak of nearly $58/bbl for WTI, $57/bbl for Brent and almost $53/bbl for the Opec crude basket. However, in'real'terms this is still well short of the $80/ bbl (in 2005 US dollars) reached in 1980. Nevertheless, some pundits have forecast prices reaching $105/bbl - a level that Goldman Sachs considers necessary to crimp oil consumption.
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