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........

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