By Jeslyn Lerh and Florence Tan

SINGAPORE (Reuters) -Supertanker freight rates surged this week and are set to stay elevated on U.S.-China tit-for-tat hikes in port fees and concerns about the fallout from U.S. sanctions on a major Chinese crude oil terminal.

Chinese retaliatory port fees announced on Friday would add more than $7 a barrel in shipping costs for a Very Large Crude Carrier linked to the U.S., traders estimated. That would be equivalent to a charge of around $15 million – a sum that would put anybody off chartering ships related to the United States.

The VLCC spot rate for the Middle East to China route, known as TD3C, hit a two-week high on Monday of W98 on the Worldscale industry measure used to calculate freight rates, according to LSEG data.

On Wednesday, that had sli

See Full Page