Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing for Wednesday, March 4th. Today on Forbes, the fall of Iran and

Venezuela are a boon for oil tanker billionaires. On day three of U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran,

tanker mogul Nicholas Sarkos fielded repeated calls from his staff in London, who were trying

to secure insurance for his tankers sailing just outside the Persian Gulf, as premiums skyrocketed,

due to Tehran's retaliation against energy facilities in the region.

In a phone interview from his Athens office, Saccoes told Forbes, quote,

We are in alert mode. We have three ships in the neighborhood there. But it's interesting

times. We're taking advantage of the spot market, which is very positive.

SACOS has been in the tanker business for decades. He founded SACOS Energy Navigation, a Greek

tanker firm set up to transported crude oil

and petroleum products in 1993 at age 30.

The firm, which went public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2002, is controlled by him

and his 89-year-old father, Panayotis, a Greek shipping billionaire.

While the tanker business has always ebbed and flowed

along with oil prices and geopolitical events, this year has been shockingly good for Sarkos and his

company, for what are arguably some unusual reasons. On January 3rd, the Trump administration

captured Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro.

His removal opened the country's oil exports and allowed more Western tanker firms to resume

operations there.

One of Sacco's ships, the Mediterranean Voyager, was the first tanker to load oil out of Venezuela

that day.

Sacco says that spot rates to charter one of his ships in Venezuela soared to $110,000 by the end of January, up from $70,000 before. That's how much a customer,

...