In 2024, one new VLCC was delivered to the world fleet. One vessel — AET's Eagle Veracruz — in a global fleet of approximately 900 ships.
In 2025, five.
The historical average for annual VLCC deliveries, across the past two decades, is roughly 35 to 40.
The delivery deficit is not a surprise. It is the product of ordering decisions made — and not made — between 2015 and 2020, when VLCC contracting collapsed to levels not seen since the early 1990s. Those years of underinvestment now sit in the fleet as a gap: a stretch of delivery years where the ships that should have arrived simply do not exist.
The gap matters because the fleet on the other side of it is ageing. Roughly 130 VLCCs currently in commercial operation are older than twenty years — the highest proportion ever recorded. Five years ago, the number was under twenty. The traditional retirement age for a VLCC was 18 to 20 years. Today, vessels of 25 years are still trading.
The orderbook has recovered from its 2023 low, when the VLCC order-to-fleet ratio fell to 3.3% — the lowest since at least 1996. Greek owners placed 52 VLCC orders in 2024. Dynacom signed for 12 more at Posidonia in June 2026. The contracting recovery is real. But the ships being ordered today will not arrive until 2028 or 2029. The delivery gap between now and then is structural.
The VLCC fleet is getting bigger by the numbers. It is getting smaller by the capacity. The difference between the two is where the freight market — and the secondhand premium — currently sits.
The fleet that looks bigger than it is
The global VLCC fleet numbers roughly 900 vessels. The average age is approximately 12 years. At first glance, these are healthy numbers.
Beneath the headline, the composition tells a different story. Tankers International, the largest VLCC commercial pool, estimates that effective vessel supply growth over the next three years will be approximately 1% — despite the nominal fleet growing by roughly 8%, or about 70 new deliveries across the period.
The reason is the age profile. Around 130 VLCCs are currently older than 20 years. A significant proportion of these vessels are no longer in mainstream commercial operation. They trade on sanctioned routes — carrying Russian, Iranian, or Venezuelan crude outside the Western insurance and financial system. They are part of what the industry calls the shadow fleet: vessels that appear in the fleet count but are functionally absent from the commercially available supply.
The fleet that oil majors, refiners, and mainstream charterers can actually hire is smaller than the fleet that exists on paper. Tankers International calls it “a mirage of growth.” The numbers grow. The usable capacity does not.
Tankers International's January 2026 outlook quantified the split: approximately 100 VLCCs are officially sanctioned, and another 100 have carried sanctioned barrels in recent years and are unlikely to return to regular trading. Together, these roughly 200 vessels represent about 23% of the global VLCC fleet removed from normal market participation. Nearly all VLCCs aged 20 years or older now operate exclusively in this parallel market. The commercially tradeable fleet — the one that mainstream charterers, oil majors, and refiners can actually hire — numbers closer to 700 than 900.
The proportion of VLCCs over 20 years will double over the next four years, reaching approximately 21% of the trading fleet. Each of these vessels faces tighter vetting, higher insurance costs, restricted charterer acceptance, and declining operational efficiency from older hull designs and engine specifications that predate the IMO 2020 sulfur cap and the CII/EEXI regulatory framework. They are still in the count. They are increasingly not in the market.
The delivery gap
The delivery numbers tell the structural story in the most direct terms.
In 2024, one VLCC was delivered. One vessel, in a global fleet of 900. In 2025, five are expected. In 2026, roughly 30 are scheduled — a significant increase, but still below the historical average of 35 to 40 deliveries per year.
The gap exists because of a multi-year contracting collapse. Between 2015 and 2020, VLCC ordering fell to a fraction of the volumes seen in the pre-2014 era. The reasons were structural: depressed freight rates, uncertainty about future fuel regulations (the IMO 2020 sulfur cap was announced but not yet in force), and a general unwillingness among owners to commit capital to large tanker newbuilds when the forward curve offered no visibility.
The ships that were not ordered in 2016, 2017, and 2018 are the ships that did not arrive in 2019, 2020, and 2021. The ships that were not ordered in 2019 and 2020 are the ones not arriving in 2023, 2024, and 2025. The delivery gap is a delayed consequence of the ordering gap, and the ordering gap reflected a market that did not believe demand would recover as strongly as it has.
By 2027 and 2028, deliveries will rise more substantially as the 2024 contracting surge begins to produce ships. But even then, the pipeline faces the Yard Switching Cost we described in our analysis of yard capacity: Korean yards are prioritising LNG carrier slots, and VLCC construction at the top shipbuilders competes directly with higher-margin gas carrier orders. The VLCC slots that exist are being squeezed by the same capacity constraint that shapes every other sector.
The Yard Switching Cost — the 18 to 36 months and tens of millions of dollars required for a shipyard to retool from one vessel type to another — means that even a surge in VLCC orders does not produce a proportional surge in VLCC deliveries. The yards that could build VLCCs are building LNG carriers instead. The slots are physically occupied. This is not a market signal problem. It is a production calendar problem.
The secondhand premium
The secondhand VLCC market is the clearest expression of the supply constraint.
A 10-year-old VLCC was trading at roughly $117 million in mid-2026. The long-run median price for a 10-year-old VLCC is approximately $48.68 million. The current market is 2.4 times the median.
This premium is not a freight rate artefact. Spot VLCC earnings in mid-2026 are strong but not at historic peaks. The premium is a supply artefact. Buying an existing VLCC today is faster than ordering a new one and waiting until 2029. The secondhand market is pricing the delivery gap — the willingness of a buyer to pay double the historical norm for a vessel that exists right now rather than wait three years for a newbuild.
Greek owners have been particularly active on the selling side. The top five Greek tanker disposers in 2026 have moved approximately $1.6 billion in combined VLCC and Suezmax sales, taking advantage of secondhand valuations that may not persist once the 2027–2028 delivery wave arrives.
The secondhand-to-newbuild price ratio is the most direct signal of the constraint. When secondhand values approach newbuild values — and in some age brackets, they have — the market is saying that the ability to trade a vessel today is worth more than the ability to build one for tomorrow.
Why old VLCCs don't retire
In a normal fleet cycle, VLCCs older than 20 years would face mandatory special surveys, drydocking costs in the range of $5–8 million, and declining charterer acceptance — all of which would push them toward scrapping. Scrap value for a VLCC is roughly $17–30 million depending on light displacement tonnage and South Asian steel prices. In historical cycles, the decision to scrap was straightforward: when the cost of the next drydock exceeded the discounted value of the remaining trading years, the ship went to the beach.
The current cycle is different. Freight rates have been elevated since 2022, driven first by post-pandemic oil demand recovery, then by the Russian crude sanctions creating an entirely separate demand pool for older tonnage. A 22-year-old VLCC that cannot pass oil major vetting for a mainstream Middle East-to-Asia fixture can still earn $30,000 to $50,000 per day carrying sanctioned crude on a ship-to-ship transfer in the South China Sea or off the coast of Malaysia.
The shadow fleet has absorbed the tonnage that would normally be scrapped. The vessels are still registered, still flagged, still counted in the fleet total — but they are no longer part of the commercially available supply. They operate outside the International Group P&I insurance system, frequently disable or spoof their AIS transponders, and trade in a parallel market that the mainstream fleet does not interact with.
The result is that the scrapping rate for VLCCs has collapsed. The fleet is ageing because the economics of keeping a 23-year-old VLCC in sanctioned trade are better than the economics of scrapping it. The traditional retirement mechanism has broken. The fleet count stays high. The effective supply stays flat.
The orderbook recovery
The VLCC orderbook has recovered from its historic low. In March 2023, the VLCC order-to-fleet ratio stood at 3.3% — the lowest on record since at least 1996. By the end of 2024, it had risen to approximately 9.1%. By mid-2026, broker estimates put it in the mid-teens as a percentage of the fleet.
The contracting recovery has been sharp. In 2024, Allied Shipbroking recorded 52 VLCC orders — more than triple the 17 placed in 2023. At Posidonia 2026, Dynacom alone signed for 12 VLCCs at Hudong-Zhonghua in a single day. Aegean Shipping Management placed its first-ever VLCC order. DHT returned to Hanwha Ocean.
The recovery is real, but three things temper it.
First, the ships being ordered in 2026 will not deliver until 2028 or 2029. The supply gap between now and then remains unfilled.
Second, the orderbook is still modest by historical standards. Container ships carry an order-to-fleet ratio of 31.6%. Bulk carriers sit around 10–12%. VLCCs in the mid-teens are recovering, not recovered.
Third, owner uncertainty about future fuel technology is compressing the contracting pace. Conventional-fuel VLCCs cost $110–130 million from Korean and Japanese yards. Dual-fuel LNG VLCCs carry a 15–25% premium. Methanol and ammonia options are still in development. Owners who do not want to bet on the wrong fuel are delaying orders, and each delayed order extends the supply gap.
What the freight market is pricing
VLCC spot earnings in mid-2026 have been supported by three overlapping conditions.
First, the demand side. China's seaborne crude imports surged through the second half of 2025, reaching over 12 million barrels per day in November — the highest daily level in more than two years. Much of this growth came from non-sanctioned, long-haul suppliers in West Africa and South America — exactly the kind of flows that increase tonne-mile demand per barrel. China added an estimated 1.1 million barrels per day to strategic petroleum reserves through 2025, with 11 new storage sites under construction adding 169 million barrels of capacity. The demand side carries a structural stockpiling tailwind that the rest of the world's import markets do not. For an understanding of how VLCC freight rates are quoted, see our explainer on Worldscale.
Second, the supply side. Effective fleet growth of 1% per year against demand growth of 2–3% creates a tightening balance. The shadow fleet removes tonnage from the commercially available pool. The delivery gap keeps new supply from arriving in time. The scrapping collapse prevents the traditional rebalancing mechanism from operating.
Third, the regulatory overhang. CII (Carbon Intensity Indicator) ratings are beginning to penalise older, less efficient VLCCs on mainstream routes. Owners who want to maintain an A or B rating need to slow-steam older vessels, which reduces effective capacity further. Slow-steaming a 22-year-old VLCC from 14 knots to 11 knots absorbs more calendar days per voyage, which tightens supply without adding a single ship.
The freight market is pricing a fleet that is bigger by name and smaller by function. The nominal fleet grows. The effective fleet tightens. The gap between the two is the margin that currently supports VLCC earnings above the long-run average.
The signal — three things to watch
The delivery schedule. When 2026 deliveries approach the historical average of 35 to 40, the first phase of the supply gap begins to close. Until then, the gap is structural. The 2027–2028 pipeline will tell whether the contracting recovery translates into meaningful supply relief.
The scrapping rate. If mainstream freight rates fall or the shadow fleet unwinds — through sanctions relief, enforcement, or insurance market pressure — older VLCCs will return to the scrapping market. The scrapping rate is the mechanism by which the fleet's age profile corrects itself. It has been broken since 2022. Watch for the repair.
The secondhand-to-newbuild price ratio. When secondhand VLCC values begin to fall below newbuild prices by a meaningful margin — 20% or more — the delivery gap is being priced as closed. Until then, the gap is open, and the market is paying for immediacy.
The VLCC fleet is getting bigger. The VLCC supply is not. The fleet count is the headline. The effective capacity is the trade.
For more on VLCC size definitions and their role in the tanker market, see Tanker Sizes Explained. The supply-side context behind the newbuild numbers is covered in our analysis of Yard Capacity as the Binding Constraint. For route-level VLCC draft restrictions, see Ten Routes That Don't Make Sense Until You Do the Math. VLCC freight rate mechanics are covered in What Is Worldscale? and Charter Parties Explained.