Considering we are almost into the fourth quarter, large crude tanker earnings remain at shockingly low levels. And with the International Energy Agency (IEA) and US Energy Information Administration downgrading their forecasts for oil consumption the prospects are not looking good.

The IEA has trimmed its demand growth forecast, for the third month running, to 0.9m barrels per day (bpd) this year and 1.2m bpd for next year. A weaker outlook for Europe and China are cited as the drivers.

VLCC earnings are languishing in negative territory going west out of the Gulf, and just above $10,000 a day going east, as of last week. Suezmaxes and aframaxes are averaging around $13,000 a day according to Clarkson Research estimates. Whether we see the sort of spikes that occurred in all three sectors around the turn of the year remains to be seen but with another 16 VLCC newbuildings theoretically due to deliver nobody will be holding their breath.

2014 earnings are still running well ahead of 2013 averages, but at around $23,000 a day for all three sectors that is not saying very much.

Some companies are keeping faith in the notion of a crude tanker recovery if the VLCC fleet expansions of Euronav and DHT Holdings are anything to go by, while the summer saw renewed VLCC ordering, albeit at lower levels than the turn of the year when a remarkable 46 vessels were ordered from November to March.

While next year's scheduled VLCC newbuilding deliveries are a non-threatening eight, 2016 sees 48 more in principle.

With only 6% of the fleet now over 15 years of age, the scope for fleet replacement appears to be limited points out London broker, EA Gibson, and indeed VLCC scrapping this year is running far below last year's levels.