You are given a text that consists of multiple sentences. Your task is to perform abstractive summarization on this text. Use your understanding of the content to express the main ideas and crucial details in a shorter, coherent, and natural sounding text. 
Text: These are indeed volatile times, although maybe not as volatile as we hope for in freight.
Q3 '21 marked the bottom of tankers post COVID-19.
This is seasonally a low point in the markets, but everything seems to have been amplified in these times we currently live in.
Towards the end of the quarter, we actually started to see a recovery in demand for freight as export volumes grew, which has continued into the fourth quarter.
Right now, we are, as of the rest of the world, worried about the implication of this new omicron variant of the COVID-19 virus.
What will OPEC plus do in that respect and will something come out of the ongoing Iranian nuclear talks in Vienna?
Well, let's start with the facts on Frontline's third quarter and look at the highlights on Slide 3.
Q3 '21 performance reflects the challenges the tanker markets faced this quarter.
It is, however, a proof that our business model, our efficient operations, our modern fleet, and very hardworking team managed to outperform most of our peers.
In the third quarter, Frontline achieved $10,500 per day on our VLCC fleet; $7,900 per day on our Suezmax fleet; and $10,700 per day on our LR2/Aframax fleet.
So far in the fourth quarter, we have booked 79% of our VLCC days at $21,600 per day; 72% of our Suezmax days at $17,900 per day; and 64% of our LR2/Aframax days at $16,000 per day.
All numbers in this table are on the load-to-discharge basis.
But I do think they show that the markets have indeed recovered from the third quarter, although we have yet to see rates reaching for these guys.
I'll now let Inger take you through the financial highlights.
Following the acquisition that we did of the eight VLCCs in the first half of the year, we have been busy on the financing side.
And in the third and the fourth quarter, we have entered into term loan facilities and obtained financing commitments for a total amount of up to $507 million to partially financed the acquisition on the two 2019 built VLCCs and also the six new building contracts.
These facilities will finance 65% of market value.
They will carry an interest rate of LIBOR plus a margin of 170 basis points.
And they will have an amortization profile of mostly 20 years but also 18, commencing from the delivery date from yard.
When we factor in 33.4 million available under the term loan facility entered into November 2020 to partially finance the delivery of the last LR2 tanker, we have established bank debt of up to $540.4 million.
The company has also raised gross proceeds of 51.2 million under the equity distribution agreement and also net cash proceeds of approximately 67 million through the sale of four LR2 tankers.
And following this, remaining commitments as per September 30th for Frontline's new building program consisting of one LR2 tanker and the six VLCCs and for the acquisition of the 2019 built VLCCs is fully funded.
Through these new financings, we reduced our borrowing costs, and we also reduced our industry-leading cash breakeven base, providing significant operating leverage and sizable returns during periods of market strength, and help protecting our cash flows during periods of market weakness.
Frontline has also extended the terms of the senior unsecured revolving credit facility of up to $275 million by 12 months to May 2023, leaving Frontline with no loan maturities until 2023.
Frontline achieved total operating revenues net of voyage expenses of $69 million and adjusted EBITDA of $17 million in the third quarter of 2021.
We reported net loss of 33.2 million or $0.17 per share and adjusted net loss of 35.9 million or $0.18 per share in the third quarter.
The adjustments consist of a 1.2 million gain on derivatives and 0.2 million gain on marketable securities, and a 1.3 million amortization of acquired time charters.
The adjusted net loss in the third quarter increased by 12.7 million compared with the second quarter.
And this increase in loss was driven by a decrease in our time charter equivalent earnings due to lower TCE rates and the recognition of a gain on the marketable securities sold in the second quarter of 4 million.
This was partly offset by a decrease in ship operating expenses of 3.2 million, primarily as a result of lower dry-docking costs.
Then let us take a look at the balance sheet on Slide 5.
The total balance sheet numbers have increased with 6 million in the third quarter.
And the balance sheet movements in the quarter are primarily related to taking delivery of the LR2 tanker Front Favour, in addition to ordinary debt repayments and depreciation.
As of September 30th, 2021, Frontline has 190 million in cash and cash equivalents including undrawn amounts under our senior unsecured loan facility, marketable securities, and minimum cash requirements.
Frontline's remaining new building and this acquisition capex of 659.4 million as per September 30th, 2021 is fully funded by a 540.4 million in estimated debt capacity and also the 118.2 million in cash raised with the ATM and the sale of the four LR2 tankers, which I mentioned.
The company has also no debt maturities until 2023, as I also mentioned.
Then let's take a closer look at cash breakeven rates and opex on Slide 6.
We estimate average cash cost breakeven base for the remainder of 2021 of approximately $21,400 per day for the VLCCs, $17,800 per day for the Suezmax tankers, and $14,100 per day for the LR2 tankers.
And the fleet average estimate is about $17,600 per day.
These rates are the all-in daily rates that our vessels must earn to cover the budgeted operating costs and dry dock, estimated interest expenses, TC and bareboat hire, installments on loans, and G&A expenses.
We recorded opex expenses in the third quarter of $8,200 per day for the VLCCs, $7,200 per day for the Suezmax tankers, and $8,800 per day for the LR2 tankers.
We dry docked two LR2 tankers in the third quarter and expect to dry dock one VLCC and one Suezmax tanker in the fourth quarter.
Then the graph on the right-hand side of the slide shows free cash flow per share and free cash flow yield basis current fleet and share price of November 26 as alternative TCE rates.
Let's take an example, if we assume historic Clarkson TCE rates for non-ECO vessels in the period 2000 to 2021, November 2021, adjusted them for Frontline fleet scrubber and ECO vessels, Frontline will have a free cash flow yield of 38%.
Free cash flow yield potential increases with higher assumed TC rates and also on a fully delivered basis.
With this, I leave the word to Lars again.
Let's move over to Slide 7 and look at the third quarter tanker market.
So tanker rate bottomed at -- during Q3, and this is seasonally kind of the normal weakest moment of the year.
But I think it's safe to say that this is not a normal year.
We actually haven't had any normal year since 2019.
So global oil consumption averaged 98.6 million barrels per day.
That's up 1.9 million barrels from the second quarter.
Supply averaged 96.8 million, also increasing by close to 2 million barrels per day.
But we continue to grow then kind of very close to 1.8 million barrels per day of inventories.
OPEC plus supply rose an average of 1.4 million barrels per day.
And I think it's important here to note that a lot of the key OPEC suppliers came out of their peak demand period, which is when they burn fuel for electricity generation, and basically for cooling.
And this normally happens in September, so toward the end of the quarter.
We saw strong demand growth in North America and in Europe, while the Asian demand recovery was muted also in the third quarter like we saw in the second quarter.
What was special about the quarter that we went through was that oil and energy prices were extremely volatile.
We saw natural gas prices, coal prices, also other commodities that are affected by energy prices rise rapidly during the quarter.
And all the markets kind of performed strongly as we came to the end of the quarter.
I think it's important to note here, if you look at the graph on the left-hand side at the bottom of the slide, so total world consumption is now actually not that far off from where we started in January '19 -- sorry, in January 2020 before the pandemic hit us.
And in December, we're actually -- some market commentators actually arguing for us to end up in or at 100 million barrels per day.
What we have seen, which is on the slide on -- sorry, the chart on the right at the bottom of the slide, is that oil in transit has developed quite well during the last couple of months.
We saw that during Q3, we remain at this kind of depressed level were kind of oil in transit increased and then decreased again and increase and you have kind of this choppy movement.
But now as we went into November, we started to see that this oil and water, which is basically a picture of demand or utilization in the tanker fleet increased rapidly to where we are now.
So let's move to Slide 8 and have a look at the order books.
So tanker ordering was obviously muted during third quarter.
We saw one Suezmax order and eight LR2/Aframax orders.
No VLCCs were reported ordered as far as we could see in the quarter.
What did happen though was that the delivery window for ordering in any kind of useful number of tankers is now starting to get limited for '24 even.
2023 is destined to show very few VLCC and Suezmax deliveries.
New building prices are indicated at very high levels.
There hasn't been much price discovery in this market, particularly for the VLCCs as no kind of newbuilds has been ordered really during the last four to five months.
But it's obviously governed by a combination of high steel prices and low availability.
And basically, the considerations that shipowners need to make now, if you are to go into the market and order a VLCC, say at 110 or 115 or $120 million depending on who you speak to, you're actually making a bet on steel prices come 2023.
So this is obviously a bet that a lot of people are hesitant to take at this point in the curve.
The VLCC order book is now at 71 units, that's a little bit north of 8% of the existing fleet.
But we still have this situation where 113 VLCCs will be above or past the 20-year mark during that period as the current order book delivers.
For Suezmax, there are 41 units in the order book and 116 will be passing 20 years using the same metrics.
One thing that's kind of changed a little bit during the third quarter is that recycling has started to show some promise.
And let's move to Slide 9.
So with the record high recycled steel prices, activity is finally accelerating.
20 -- as you see on the chart at the top there, so 2017 and 2018 were the last big periods for vessel retirement.
And now in Q3 alone, we saw close to 0.76% of the global tanker fleet sold for recycling.
We are in a situation now where alternative use for tankers is extremely limited.
As most of you may know, that kind of in earlier markets, you've had the opportunity to either convert a ship for storage or even it could be converted into a vessel, so basically an oil-producing unit.
This -- obviously, these markets are closed as it is right now.
And we also see that during the pandemic, it's becoming evident that the capacity for recycling was seriously contracted.
So basically, there has been COVID pandemic in countries like India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.
So basically, year to date, we've seen 15 VLCCs, 11 Suezmaxes, 18 Aframax, and eight LR2s that are reported sold for demolition.
And broadly speaking, this amounts to actually close to 2% of the existing fleet.
So basically, we believe that this might accelerate going forward as the recycling values are still extremely strong.
Then let's move to Slide 10.
So there's a lot of noise in the market currently.
But I believe we'll need a few weeks to learn more about this variant to even know where we're heading.
What we do know is that in the recent weeks, we've had kind of a message of U.S. releasing oil from their strategic petroleum reserve.
There are obviously other x again factors playing up as well, but let's focus on this one.
have released volumes from their SPR on a few occasions over the last 18 months.
And despite U.S. inventories being below five-year averages, this country is actually not particularly short of crude oil.
And after the recent releases, we have actually observed slightly higher exports with a significant part of the volume going to Asia and particularly so in October and November this year.
And it's obviously not the SPR volume itself that is directly kind of heading into Gulf Coast and being exported.
But it's basically there is an ample kind of supply of oil in U.S. And what an SPR release creates is that you depress the local prices for crude and this basically makes that crude attractive to Chinese or Asian buyers.
effort and release from their SPRs.
But apart from India, none have been very specific on volume.
And we have to remember that these Asian countries are far more sensitive to severe supply disruptions and -- because they have very limited domestic production capacity.
And the Northern Asian region is facing record-high energy prices as they now head into winter.
So whether it be released -- whether it's oil will be released at all from the SPR now after having a $10 drop in oil prices is obviously the question.
But if it should happen, it could actually trigger a ton-mile increase.
So let's move to the summary and let's go through a couple of things that are at play right now.
So demand and supply of oil continues to rise, but the latest virus version is obviously now clouding the outlook.
Tanker markets have recovered since Q3 '21, but it's still challenged by oil supply not fully at pre-pandemic levels.
Tanker recycling, I think this is a very important thing to note that tanker recycling has finally started to make an impact on vessel supply.
And then we have all these exogen factors that we really don't know much of at this point.
SPR release, opex strategy going forward.
They just postponed the meeting for a couple of days in order to find out more on the virus outbreak and the resumed Iranian nuclear talks in Vienna.
So there's a lot of stuff that is going to happen over the next couple of weeks.
Oil in transit continues to rise and energy prices are at record highs as the Northern Hemisphere is heading into winter.
I think the most important part here is that Frontline's financial commitments are now fully funded with reduced overall funding costs, and we are indeed well-positioned as the story of this market unfolds.
Finally, I've used this graph below before, and it just year on year basically various segments and how the trades are performing.
And we do see that for tankers, it's actually showing a growth of 3.8% year on year in October compared to October 2020.
So tankers have been lagging all the other asset classes in shipping for a while, but now we're actually starting to perform with.

user
frontline q3 net loss at $33.2 mln.
q3 net loss -33.2 million usd.
q3 diluted loss per share 0.17 usd.
reg-fro - third quarter and nine months 2021 results.
net loss of $33.2 million, or $0.17 per basic and diluted share for q3 of 2021.
reported spot tces for vlccs, suezmax tankers and lr2 tankers in q3 of 2021 were $10,500, $7,900 and $10,700 per day, respectively.
adjusted net loss of $35.9 million, or $0.18 per basic and diluted share for q3 of 2021.
for q4 of 2021, we estimate spot tce on a load-to discharge basis of $21,600 contracted for 79% of vessel days for vlccs.
for q4 estimates $17,900 contracted for 72% of vessel days for suezmax tankers and $16,000 contracted for 64% of vessel days for lr2 tankers.
board of directors has decided not to pay a dividend for q3 2021.

assistant