We continue to experience the largest change in trade flows, ongoing crude and oil product movements as a result of Western sanctions on Russian seaborne oil, and more recently on changes in the production of the Red Sea as a result of the Houthis attacks on merchant vessels. A lot of charterers send vessels through the Cape of Good Hope instead of the shorter distance through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal to avoid being attacked. As we said in previous calls, most of these changes appear to be permanent. Before the war in Ukraine, Europe was the biggest client of Russian oil, but as the war continues, Russian oil has been replaced with oil from the United States, West Africa, Guyana, Brazil and the Middle East, creating a positive ton-mile multiplier effect for tanker demand and freight rates.
At the same time, global oil demand continues to grow post-COVID. 2024 is expected to be another record year for global oil demand, rating on average 1.32 million barrels per day versus approximately 1.18 million barrels per day in 2023. Of course, there are global headwinds that we have acknowledged and are in our radar screens for quite some time now, like inflation, which might be coming down but we could end up with higher interest rates for longer, the world in Ukraine and in Gaza, the OPEC plus production cuts and voluntary cuts by Saudi Arabia and Russia, which have been extended at least until the end of second quarter of 2024, if not more probably until the end of the year. However, we have a global economy that continues to grow, and the International Monetary Fund in its most recent report anticipates 2024, the global economy to grow with 3.1% and 3.2% in 2025.
And as mentioned above, oil demand is expected to grow another 1.3 million barrels per day higher in 2024 than in 2023. Strong non-OPEC growth coming out of the United States of America, Canada, Guyana, Brazil will counter for now any OPEC production cuts and tanker fundamentals continue to favor a strong market for the next 2 to 3 years. Let’s now move to the slides of our presentation. Starting with Slide 3, we see that since inception in 1993, we have faced 5 major crisis, and each time the company came out stronger, thanks to its operating model. The average company growth is 21% in terms of total fleet deadweight owned. In the next slides, we see the company’s fleet growth in capital market access since inception. We raised capital for growth not at the top of the market, but at times when asset prices were usually low.
In this slide, the numbers in the blue boxes represent the company’s common share offerings and in red, the series of preferred shares offering since the company’s New York Stock Exchange listing. The first three preferred series totaling $188 million of par value, the Series B, C and D, plus a private place preferred instrument of $35 million initial par value have been fully redeemed, saving the company in excess of $18 million per year in coupon payments for all retired preferred shares. In Slide 5, we see the fleet and its current fleet employment, including the weakened fleet that we acquired with the first of the 5 tankers in operations already for 10 since yesterday, we have a pro forma operational fleet of 66 tankers. 34 out of these 66 vessels or 52% of their fleet in the water has market exposure, a combination of spot, contract of affreightments and time charter with profit sharings.
51 out of the 66 vessels or 77% are in secured contracts, fixed time charters and time charters with profit sharing. This means that TEN is well-positioned to continue capturing the positive tanker market fundamentals. Slide 6 presents the company’s current and long-term clients. As you see, we have a blue chip customer base consisting of all major global energy companies, refineries, commodity traders with Equinor currently topping the list as our largest charterer. The left side of Slide 7 presents the all in breakeven cost for the various vessel types we operate in TEN. Our operating model is simple. We try to have our time charter vessels generate revenue to cover the company’s cash expenses, paying for the vessel operating expenses, finance expenses, overheads, chartering costs and commissions, and net revenue from the spot rating vessels contribute to the profitability of the Company.
This year, fleet utilization climbed to 96.3% from 94.7% the prior year. Both numbers are very strong utilization numbers. And thanks to the profit sharing elements, for every $1,000 per day increase in spot rates, we have a positive $0.18 impact in annual EPS based on the number of 10 vessels that currently have exposure to spot rates. Spot debt reduction is an integral part of the company’s capital allocation strategy, the company’s debt kicking December of 2016. Since then, we have repaid $349 million of debt and redeemed $211 million in three series of preferred shares, plus a privately placed preferred instrument. Slide 9, sale and purchase activity is a cornerstone of TEN’s strategy and this resulting fleet modernity is a key element for our operating model.
The left side of the slide shows the divestments in tankers since the start of 2023. We sold nine vessels, six, 2005 built MRs, two 2006 built Handysize product tankers and one 2005 built Suezmax tanker, totaling 560,000 deadweight tons, having an average age of the vessels that we sold of 18.5 years. Looking at the right side of the slide, under growth, we have the number of vessels we are currently building and acquired since the same period, the 1 January 2023. 16 vessels in total, eco-friendly, greener vessels. We have a currently newbuilding program of seven firm tankers, which consist of three shuttle tankers for delivery in 2025 and in 2026, two eco-friendly scrubber fitted Suezmax’s for delivery also in 2025 and two scrubber fitted MRs for delivery in early ’26.
