A hulking tanker known as the Plata Carrier steamed out of the Strait of Hormuz last week carrying 2 million barrels of crude. More than four months after it entered the Persian Gulf, the blue-red ship is now en route to India.
The vessel, and more than a dozen others to have passed through the strait in recent weeks, is controlled by Ga-Hyun Chung, a reclusive Korean magnate who has emerged as one of the biggest beneficiaries of the conflict in the Middle East.
Chung spent around $7 billion amassing the world’s largest fleet of oil tankers before the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran, according to people familiar with the deals. His firm, Sinokor, now controls an estimated 10% of the world’s so-called very large crude carriers.
Much of the funding came from Gianluigi Aponte, the billionaire co-founder of container giant Mediterranean Shipping Co., the people said. The Italian magnate had money to burn after the pandemic-era boxship boom.
The timing of the wager—among the biggest in maritime history—could hardly have been better.
When the Strait of Hormuz shut, shipping markets went haywire. Traders paid record sums to move oil from Europe and the U.S. to fuel-starved Asian economies desperate to replace energy supplies from the Persian Gulf.
Chung is in prime position to profit again from the gusher of oil that will emerge as the waterway reopens. Rising demand for ships is already pushing tanker rates higher.
His exploits were a talking point at a recent shipping conference in Athens, where he was seen smoking cigars at late-night parties surrounded by bodyguards.
In an industry of big personalities, the scion of a Korean shipping family eschews the media and keeps a low profile. He didn’t respond to questions for this article. Executives who have dealt with Chung say he is a keen judoka and forms large WhatsApp groups with other shipowners to discuss the market.
Industry veterans were initially stunned by the size of Chung’s wager and happily sold him ships, believing the boom-bust tanker market would soon teach the relative newcomer a lesson.
While Chung’s purchases are private, rivals and brokers have tried to keep track. Eirini Diamantara of Greek firm Xclusiv Shipbrokers estimates that Sinokor has more than 160 tankers. Almost half are VLCCs, capable of carrying 2 million barrels of oil in a single voyage.
His partnership with Aponte is shrouded in secrecy. A recent regulatory filing in Greece showed a subsidiary of MSC has agreed to buy a stake in Sinokor, but even people who have worked on ship deals with Chung don’t know all the details of the duo’s arrangement.
Chung’s father founded Sinokor as a joint venture with Chinese interests in 1989, when Korean-Chinese relations were thawing. As trade between the two economies grew, so did the container-shipping company.
Sinokor added tankers to its fleet in the wake of the pandemic, but the purchases went into overdrive late last year.
Industry insiders say they suspect Chung is betting that a single player with deep pockets can amass a big enough fleet to push up freight prices by holding back some tankers from the market.
They reel off reasons why he might succeed: None of the big Greek, Nordic or Asian owners has a dominant position. The mainstream tanker market is shrinking as some ships are sold into the so-called shadow fleet that ferries sanctioned oil. And competition authorities struggle to track—let alone crack down on—purchases in the opaque secondhand shipping market.
But previous attempts to corner shipping markets offer a cautionary tale. As China’s economy roared in the 2000s, Taiwanese tycoon Nobu Su earned a fortune after taking control of a big portion of the “dry bulk” ships that move coal and iron ore. He tried to repeat the trick in tankers, and flopped as the world economy seized up in 2008.
So far Chung’s bet appears to be paying off. In March, soon after the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran, average daily earnings for the biggest oil tankers vaulted to more than $385,000, according to Clarksons. That is by far the highest level on the shipbroker’s records going back to 2000.
Chung positioned VLCCs behind the Strait of Hormuz before the conflict and chartered them out to act as floating storage early in the war. Some of his tankers then did shuttle runs through Hormuz to ports just outside the Gulf, where traders picked up the crude to carry to Asia, according to ship-tracking firm Kpler.
Sinokor’s derivative traders, who buy and sell paper contracts tied to freight markets, also stood to profit when rates rose, people familiar with the matter said.
While tanker rates have cooled since the early weeks of the war, they remain elevated. Shipping veterans expect more-convoluted trading patterns and pricey tankers to outlast the conflict.
The recent reopening of Hormuz, while tentative, is already spurring demand for ships, including Sinokor’s.
A week after President Trump signed the peace deal with Iran, Plata Carrier started sailing from waters off the U.A.E. inside the Gulf toward Hormuz. As of Thursday, it was about to round the southern tip of India, heading to a huge refinery on the country’s east coast.
Write to Costas Paris at costas.paris@wsj.com and Joe Wallace at joe.wallace@wsj.com
