As OilPrice reports, amid a general unwillingness of tanker owners to send their vessels to Russian ports, the freight rates for a medium-sized tanker to load Russian crude jumped nearly threefold on Thursday from Wednesday, shipbrokers and traders told Bloomberg.

The freight rate to hire an Aframax tanker on the Baltic Sea to Europe route surged after Russia invaded Ukraine, while owners of oil tankers had already started to avoid Russian ports because of both the military invasion of Ukraine and apprehension that sanctions for oil could also come soon.  

Rates for oil tankers on the TD6 Black Sea-to-Med route surged more than six-fold, by $90,752/day, to $107,382/day from under 17,000, according to data from the Baltic Exchange in London. That's the highest since April 2020. Baltic Sea oil tanker rates have also soared. Ships on the TD7 Baltic-to- U.K. Cont. route rose by $13,407 to $135,148/day, the highest in data going back to 2008.

Rates to charter Suezmax ships climbed $55,800 to $67,027/day, the highest since April 2020 when every oil merchant was scrambling to store oil offshore.

As a result of the surging Baltic-Europe tanker rates, the Middle East to Europe rates also rose, and on Friday hit the highest on record.

Two-thirds of Russia's crude oil exports are seaborne, from ports in the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea. The Russian flagship Urals crude grade loads from ports in the Baltic Sea, and most of it is sold in Europe.