Geopolitics Oct 19, 2026 · 8 min read

Washington’s ‘good-guy fleet’ won’t cut your fuel surcharges

US plan to clean up dark tankers won’t lower your fuel bill. On Monday, US Energy Secretary Chris Wright said investors can buy idle sanctioned “dark fleet” tankers, refurbish them and carry legal oil. Wright puts the dark fleet at about 1,600 ships. We think the plan won’t change freight costs. Kpler says only about 24 of roughly 160 US-sanctioned supertankers could return to mainstream trade. It also says war risk, not a lack of ships, is driving Gulf freight. Our advice: don’t tell customers that bunker or emergency fuel surcharges will ease. Our call: no major container line cuts its emergency fuel surcharge because of this plan before the end of November.

Turning dark tankers ‘good’ won’t bring down tanker rates, bunkers or your surcharges
On Monday 19 October, US Energy Secretary Chris Wright confirmed that Washington will let sanctioned “dark fleet” tankers start a process to carry legal crude. Investors would buy idle sanctioned ships, refurbish them and put them to work on legitimate trade. Wright put the dark fleet at about 1,600 tankers. He said dozens or hundreds could be added to legitimate shipping, according to The National.
The aim is to cool energy prices and record tanker rates while the Strait of Hormuz stays effectively closed. Brent crude settled 0.48% lower on Monday at $109.3 a barrel. West Texas Intermediate (WTI, the US benchmark) fell 0.61% to $98.42.
Our view is simple. This is the main lever Washington is pulling on freight costs, and it is a weak one. It may take a few points off tanker futures for a week. It will not fix what is pushing up bunker fuel, and it will not shrink the emergency surcharges on your container and air invoices. Forwarders should not tell customers that relief is coming.

What Washington actually announced

Wright spoke at a Citadel Securities event in New York. “We’re going to move some of the ships from what I call the ‘bad-guy fleet’ to the ‘good-guy fleet,’” he said, as reported by The National. “They will not carry sanctioned oil any more.”
He also pushed back on the idea that this lets ships off the hook for carrying Russian or Iranian oil. “We are converting dark tankers to legitimate tankers,” he said.
A “dark fleet”, also called a shadow fleet, is a pool of tankers that move sanctioned oil. They often switch off their tracking signals, use shell owners and run with thin or doubtful insurance. Under the plan, some of those ships would be sold to new owners, brought up to standard and put into normal trade.
Reuters reported on the idea on Friday 16 October. An unnamed US official told Reuters there had been talks about lifting sanctions on dark fleet tankers one by one. “This would lower shipping rates and increase flows,” the official said.

The numbers behind the ‘good-guy fleet’

The headline figure of 1,600 ships sounds large. The usable figure is much smaller.
Ship-tracking firm Kpler counts about 160 supertankers under US sanctions. That is about 22% of the commercial fleet, according to the Reuters report carried by Baird Maritime. About 46 of them are more than 20 years old. Kpler says only about 24 could rejoin global trade once age is taken into account and ships owned by Iran’s National Tanker Company are left out.
Kpler’s verdict was blunt. “Kpler expects the measure to have virtually no impact on the current tanker crisis,” the firm said. It added that the plan assumes removing sanctions will create more commercially available ships. “In practice, the relationship is far more complicated,” Kpler’s analysts said.
The National reported the same point from Kpler in a different way. In the firm’s view, war risk in the Gulf, rather than a shortage of ships alone, is what is driving freight costs there. So adding hulls does little if owners and insurers still won’t send them into danger.
Then there is the question of who would hire these ships. “Companies are unlikely to charter tankers that were recently under sanctions,” said David Tannenbaum, a director at sanctions consultancy Blackstone Compliance Services. He pointed out that EU sanctions still apply to tankers that worked in Russian trade. He also said many ships sanctioned over Venezuela trade had dealt with Iran too. And he said the licences needed to repossess or sell a shadow fleet tanker typically take months, if not years.
Put those together and the realistic pool is a couple of dozen elderly ships. Each one needs new owners, a licence, repairs, a class certificate (proof a ship meets safety standards) and credible insurance. None of that happens in weeks.

Why the market still blinked

Despite all that, freight futures fell on the report. Forward freight agreements, or FFAs, are contracts that let traders lock in or bet on future tanker rates. TP ICAP energy specialist Scott Shelton said rates to hire an Aframax (a mid-size tanker that carries up to 750,000 barrels) from the US Gulf Coast to Europe fell 30 points.
Cheaper freight also helped US crude. High shipping costs had pushed WTI’s discount to Brent out to $14.17 a barrel that week, the widest in more than five months. After the report, the gap narrowed to about $10.42, Reuters said.
We read that as a sentiment move. Traders priced in the chance of more ships before any ship had changed hands. It is a reaction to a headline, not to new supply.
For context on how high rates are, look at early October. On 7 October, Breakbulk News reported that rates for very large crude carriers (VLCCs, the biggest class of crude tanker) from the Gulf of Oman had topped $1 million a day. The DHT Antelope was reported fixed at $1.162 million a day for a voyage to South Korea, though the deal was still on subjects (not final). Koch’s Silverstone was reported at $1.015 million a day. At least 12 tankers had been attacked in the Strait of Hormuz since 29 September, the same report said. Twenty-four extra ships do not answer that kind of risk.

From tanker rates to your invoice

Here is why a forwarder should care about crude tankers at all.
Ships burn bunker fuel, which is refined from crude. When crude is expensive and costly to move, bunker prices follow. Carriers then pass those costs on through the BAF (bunker adjustment factor, the routine fuel charge) and, in a crisis, through emergency fuel surcharges on top.
Bunker prices are already far above where forecasters expected. Ship & Bunker’s 20-port average (G20) for VLSFO (very low sulphur fuel oil, the main fuel most ships now burn) was $876.50 a tonne on 6 October, as reported by ShipUniverse. Marine gasoil reached $1,500 a tonne on the same average. In Singapore, the world’s biggest bunkering port, ENGINE put VLSFO at $869 a tonne on 2 October, up $76 in a day.
Compare that with what was expected. After the US Energy Information Administration’s August outlook, Ship & Bunker raised its forecast and saw G20 VLSFO averaging $646 a tonne in Q4 2026. Early October prices are running about $230 above that. The note said the revision came after the EIA gave up on hopes of an early Hormuz recovery. Ship & Bunker’s Q4 forecast has since risen to about $882 a tonne, ShipUniverse reported. Our reading: forecasts betting on an early fix have been too low, again and again.
Container lines have already priced this in. CMA CGM brought in an emergency fuel surcharge from 1 August, citing “the renewed escalation of hostilities in the Strait of Hormuz,” according to Container News. It charges $150 per TEU (twenty-foot equivalent unit, a standard container) for dry boxes on long-haul headhaul trades, and $75 on backhaul and intra-regional trades. It runs until further notice.
Air is exposed too. Japan Airlines said Singapore jet fuel averaged $132.50 a barrel over June and July 2026. It used that figure to set its passenger fuel surcharges. In our view, air cargo fuel surcharges follow the same jet fuel prices, so they will move with crude, not with tanker politics.

What forwarders should do now

Our view: none of the costs on your invoice depend on whether a few old tankers get new paperwork. They depend on crude prices and on war risk at Hormuz. The conversion plan touches neither in the near term.
That leads to some practical points.
Don’t promise relief. If a customer has read that Washington is “fixing” tanker rates, explain that the realistic pool is about 24 ships and that the process takes months. Quote surcharges as they stand.
Watch the right numbers. The signals that matter for your fuel costs are Brent, the G20 VLSFO average and actual transits through Hormuz. Tanker futures can swing on headlines and snap back.
Expect stickiness. Emergency surcharges are easy to add and slow to remove. Carriers will wait for bunker prices to fall and stay down before they cut. A policy announcement is not that.
Read contracts closely. If your rates include an index-linked BAF, a real fall in bunker prices will reach you over time. If you are paying a flat emergency surcharge “until further notice”, it will only go when the carrier decides.
Keep an eye on crude-linked lanes. A narrower WTI–Brent gap helps US crude exports. It does little for Gulf container, reefer or project cargo, which still faces war-risk cover and alternative routings.

Our call

Our prediction: no major container line will cut or scrap its emergency fuel surcharge because of the dark-fleet plan before the end of November 2026. We also expect the G20 VLSFO average to stay above $800 a tonne through the end of Q4 unless Hormuz reopens to normal traffic. And we expect fewer than 24 converted tankers to be trading on mainstream charters by the end of 2026.

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