Operator

[Operator Instructions] With that, I'll hand it over to CEO, Jan Rindbo; and CFO, Martin Badsted. Mr. Jan, please go ahead.

Jan Rindbo
Chief Executive Officer

Thank you very much, and hello to everyone. Thank you for joining. Let me start by just giving you just a brief introduction to NORDEN. We are a leading global operator transporting the essential commodities for industrial customers worldwide. We have a capital-efficient fleet strategy combining owned and chartered vessels, which enable us to navigate market cycles and deliver competitive returns. So today, we will take you through our performance and the strategic positioning of the company.

So let's dive straight into it, and let's do that with probably one of the most discussed topics at the moment, the conflict in the Middle East, which obviously are having big impact on both the markets and operations. So we see, obviously, on the tanker side, strong support on the tanker rate. We've seen surging spot rates where tankers are in high demand to help rebalancing oil markets in view of the lack of the oil supply that's coming out of the Middle East.

The dry cargo market reaction has been more muted. And here, it's probably more the additional operational impacts and costs that affect the business. We have seen, obviously, with higher oil prices, a significant increase in the bunker costs. So they're up roughly around 50% since the start of the conflict. That does not directly impact NORDEN because we hedge the directional risk of the oil price, but we are seeing physical delivery premiums have spiked that cannot be hedged.

NORDEN has, as