qaq's assertion that shipping costs have zero correlation with oil prices is not accurate. It's not difficult to demonstrate that some correlation exists, and o

qaq's assertion that shipping costs have zero correlation with oil prices is not accurate. It's not difficult to demonstrate that some correlation exists, and one can also do an overlay of shipping cost indexes to oil prices. Shipping is already highly efficient in general, so it might be the opposite that fuel prices are a significant percentage of operating expenses. Low estimates I've seen state that fuel costs are around 40% of operating expenses. Source: https://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans/eng/ch7en/conc7en/bdi.html https://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans/eng/ch7en/conc7en/bdi.ht... I'm not arguing they're the only cost, but there has been a lot of hysteria about the Baltic Dry Index this month. So much that Snopes and Marine Traffic responded to it: http://www.snopes.com/cargo-ships-atlantic-map/ http://www.snopes.com/cargo-ships-atlantic-map/