The Impact of Slumping Oil Price on the Situation of Tanker Shipping along the Maritime Silk Road

Nearly 70% of the world’s maritime crude oil transportation relies on the Maritime Silk Road (MSR). In order to deeply explore the impact of slumping oil price on the shipping situation of tanker along the MSR, this paper establishes the relationship between monthly ship and oil price through Autoregressive Distributed Lag model. Distributions of cargo flow before and after the oil price slumped are compared to explore the changing law of tanker shipping situation. The study finds: (1) The correlation between the cargo flow situation of the tanker seaborne export and oil price, where the export cargo flow correlation is stronger than that of the import cargo flow. (2) The MSR tanker shipping situation is lagging (3 months) behind the impact of oil price. The lag effect in Europe, North Asia and East Asia is strong while that in Southeast Asia and South Asia is weak. (3) After the oil price slumped, the tanker shipping cargo flow increased less during the crude oil export stage, and the increase in the crude oil shipping trade after the transfer period was larger. The research results can provide a scientific basis for improving the decision-making ability of the crude oil shipping market and formulating maritime operations management measures.