On day three of U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran, tanker mogul Nikolas Tsakos fielded repeated calls from his staff in London who were trying to secure insurance for his tankers sailing just outside the Persian Gulf, as premiums skyrocketed due to Tehran’s retaliation against energy facilities in the region.

“We are in alert mode. We have three ships in the neighborhood there,” Tsakos told Forbes in a phone interview from his Athens office. “But it's interesting times. We're taking advantage of the spot market, which is very positive.”

Tsakos has been in the tanker business for decades. He founded Tsakos Energy Navigation—a Greek tanker firm set up to transport crude oil and petroleum products—in 1993 at age 30. The firm, which went public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2002, is controlled by him and his 89-year-old father Panagiotis, a Greek shipping billionaire.

While the tanker business has always ebbed and flowed along with oil prices and geopolitical events, this year has been shockingly good for Tsakos and his company, for what are arguably some unusual reasons.

On January 3, the Trump administration captured Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro. His removal opened up the country’s oil exports and allowed more Western tanker firms to resume operations there. One of Tsakos’ ships, the Mediterranean Voyager, was the first tanker to load oil out of Venezuela that day.

Tsakos says that spot rates to charter one of his ships in Venezuela soared to $110,000 by the end of January, up from $70,000 before. That's how much a customer, such as an oil firm or oil trader, would pay a tanker firm for a single ship per day with immediate loading. Now, after the strikes on Iran, he says that’s up to as much as $160,000 for certain ships. “It's a good thing. I hoped all this would not be because of this situation [in Iran], but we are where we are,” he adds.

Those higher rates have also been fueled by disruptions to shipping lanes, both in the Red Sea—where the Iran-backed Houthi militia was targeting Western ships—and now in the strait of Hormuz, where Tehran is effectively shutting down a key waterway through which 20% of global oil supplies pass every day. They’ve also led to a surge in tanker stocks.

Shares in Tsakos Energy Navigation have jumped 69% since the start of the year, including more than 4% on Monday, the first day of trading after the strikes on Iran. Shares of Frontline, the world's fifth-largest oil tanker firm in which billionaire John Fredriksen owns a significant stake, have performed even better, up 93% in the past 60 days.

All of these factors have propelled the fortunes of the 13 richest tanker owners tracked by Forbes up by more than 50% over the past year to a collective $130 billion, largely due to higher stock prices and ship valuations.

Even before America’s military moves, prices of certain tankers were rising rapidly. For instance, demand for enormous tankers known as VLCCs that can make long-haul journeys started to spike in December.

Much of that has been driven by Sinokor, a Korean company that’s spent more than $2.5 billion in about three months rapidly buying up VLCCs to amass one of the world’s largest fleets. (There are reports that Sinokor is essentially acting as a frontman for Swiss-Italian billionaire Gianluigi Aponte and his firm MSC, the world’s largest container shipping company; a representative for MSC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.) Most recently the price for these second-hand VLCCs has hit levels not seen in the past decade, with 10-year-old ships trading for more than $100 million apiece, according to maritime services firm Signal Group.

“All of these vessels have been bought at prices significantly higher than the last time [they were sold],’’ says Fredrik Dybwad, an analyst at Oslo-based maritime and energy investment bank Fearnley Securities.

Another boost to the tanker firms is the U.S. campaign against the “shadow” or “gray” fleet, a group of more than 1,000 aging tankers registered in obscure jurisdictions that sail without Western insurance and obfuscate their location or conduct ship-to-ship transfers of oil. Long used by Iran and Venezuela to transport their oil to get around Western sanctions, they’ve also been employed by Russia since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Since last December, the U.S. has seized 10 shadow fleet tankers that transported oil from Iran, Russia and Venezuela and sanctioned about 300 more. That crackdown, combined with Maduro’s ouster, opened up opportunities for sanctions-compliant tanker companies to take some of that business. Previously, China was the largest buyer of Venezuelan oil, largely relying on the shadow fleet to transport it.

“There's a new market now,” says Tsakos. “China will not stop importing. They were paying a huge amount for the gray fleet, but now they will be paying good money to the legitimate ships.”

Tsakos Energy Navigation has several ships chartered to Chevron, the only U.S. oil company that was still operating in Venezuela under the Maduro regime. As the country begins to reestablish its oil industry and approves more licenses for foreign companies, companies that already have a foothold like Chevron—and tanker firms like Tsakos—are poised to benefit.

“In the long term, once you get oil production up and running, you will see a positive impact on the tankers,” says Dybwad.

No matter the end result of the U.S. attacks on Iran, tanker firms are likely to profit. China is the largest buyer of Iranian oil, but the war is making it difficult for Iran to keep exporting. If the conflict drags on and continues disrupting the flow of oil, then China will have to find alternative sources—likely another boost for tanker firms. “You'll see higher oil prices in the short term,” says Dybwad. “And you need to source that oil from somewhere else, which is most likely non-sanctioned, which should be positive for the crude tankers.”

If the regime in Iran were to fall—and Western sanctions on the country were removed—that would also open up Iranian oil to the world’s largest tanker companies and effectively leave Russia as the only country engaging with the shadow fleet.

Says Tsakos, “It's going to be more output from Iran, more output from Venezuela, and without the gray fleet around, much more demand for [legitimate] ships.”

© Forbes