The Hebei Spirit continues to dominate the industry and Opec has once again grabbed the attention of tanker owners everywhere, this time by agreeing its deepest production cut to date.

The headlines may be familiar, but the situation is markedly different.

Last year, in this very column, we noted that it had been a tough year in the tanker business. Not tough in the traditional sense of markets being so bad that owners could not even afford shoelaces, as was the case at moments over the past 25 years, but relatively tough compared to the stellar markets earlier this decade.

What has made it worse was that the tanker boys’ cousins in the traditionally low-rent dry bulk business had been surfing a boom in freight rates.

Still, considering very large crude carrier rates were around W170 at this point last year, a tanker owner would earn around $139,000 a day on a 38-day round trip from Saudi Arabia to South Korea. With a breakeven rate of about $30,000 a day, that made for very nice business indeed.

Today the tables have been turned. Despite the fall in rates last week to W81, VLCC owners are still earning about $60,000 per day for a trip from the Middle East Gulf to east. It is obviously disappointing compared to last year, but it is also worth pointing out that they are still in a much stronger position than their dry bulk counterparts, where the average capesize rate stands at around $9,740 per day.

But it is perhaps time to draw what little comfort you can from this while it lasts.

A deepening recession has battered world oil demand and fuel inventories are bulging worldwide. Prices have already plunged by two-thirds since the summer and analysts say the oil market is under the sway of world financial turmoil.

Opec’s latest production cuts — the equivalent of taking a VLCC cargo out of the market each day — only promise to push tanker rates downward from here on.