Bloomberg Surveillance · Thursday, October 1, 2026
John Kartzonis describes the current situation in global shipping as unprecedented, with simultaneous disruptions occurring in critical waterways like the Red Sea, Arabian Sea, and Black Sea. He suggests this indicates a 'new paradigm' where inflation is showing up in the price of refined goods, including freight costs and refiner profit margins, rather than just the price of crude oil.
“I think, you know, this is definitely unprecedented. And that's, I'm not saying that lightly. If you go back decades, even centuries, when you look, when you never had disruptions in happening at the same time in the most important waterways in the world, right? You have the Red Sea, you have the Arabian Sea, you have the Black Sea, right? You know, the heating vessels all over the world. So we're definitely in a new paradigm.”
“And I think, like, you know, whether that continues, I don't know. But the inflation is not showing up in the price of oil. It's showing up in the price of refined goods. And this includes the price of freight and includes what they call the crack spread, right, the profit that the funders make. But it's the end user price that matters. Diesel, gasoline is not the price of oil.”