Initially Onassis was to supply 500,000 tons of tankers, and as the ARAMCO (the US-controlled Saudi oil concession) fleet became obsolete, SAMCO would replace their ships with its own. In May King Saud ratified the treaty and Onassis' biggest tanker, launched in Germany, was named the Al Malik Saud Al-Awa in his honor. Needless to say, the oil companies did not welcome a private shipowner controlling this strategic oil resource, nor did the American government. ARAMCO turned away Onassis' tankers from its terminal and the US State Department pressed Saudi Arabia to drop the agreement. Onassis became the target of an FBI investigation and the coup became a disaster. As the shipping cycle turned down in the summer of 1956, Onassis's tanker fleet was laid up. Then he got lucky. On 25 July 1956 Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal, and in October Israel, Britain and France invaded Egypt to win back control. During this conflict Egypt blocked the Canal with 46 sunken ships and Middle East oil bound for the North Atlantic had to be shipped by the long route around the Cape of Good Hope. Tanker rates surged from $4 per ton to more than $60 per ton and Onassis was ideally placed to take advantage of the boom. In six months he made a profit of $75-80 million, equivalent to $1.5 billion at 2005 prices. But that was not the end of the story. Believing that the Egyptian government was not capable of reopening the Canal, Onassis expected it to be closed for several years, leading to a strong tanker market. When his aide Costa Gratsos urged him to take some time-charter cover, he told him: 'I'm hot, Costa, I'm in front of the parade. I've got the touch; I don't even have to breathe hard. Why the hell should we crap out now?' Costa Gratsos did not agree and secretly chartered 12 tankers to Esso for 39 months. When he found out, Onassis hit the roof, but he had misjudged the capability of the Egyptian government. The Canal was reopened only a few months later in April 1957, just as the US economy was slipping into its deepest recession since the 1930s and tanker rates slumped. Onassis had allowed himself to be caught up in a wave of market sentiment. Reluctantly he admitted, 'you read it right. I read it wrong'.13 He had misjudged Egypt's ability to reopen the canal, a matter which the right information and analysis could have addressed (though to be fair this is more obvious with hindsight than it was at the time). The trouble is that information of this type is difficult to obtain and analyze, especially against the background of a booming market, so forecasters have to be versatile. This is the stuff of legends, and Onassis was not the only entrepreneur to make a fortune in ship owning. Livanos, Pao, Tung, Bergesen, Reconati, Niarchos, Onassis, Lemos, Haji-Ioannou, Ofer and Fredriksen are just a few of the families who have become fabulously wealthy in the shipping business during the last half century. But not everyone makes a fortune in shipping. As we saw in Chapter 3, shipping companies face endless recessions and average returns tend to be both low and risky in the sense that investors never know when the market will dive into recession." (Stopford, 2015)

why was Onassis's tanker fleet laid up? What does it mean for the shipping world that the economy soured? How will that impact the shipping cycles? What is the impact on the supply and what situation do you expect in the shipping market: surplus or shortage. What corresponds to a shortage or surplus: more ships than cargo, less and so on.