Tanker Chartering

Tanker work is materially more vetting-heavy than dry bulk, and that is where the broker’s role concentrates. Before a fixture is firmed, vessels are screened against SIRE 2.0 (the OCIMF tanker inspection regime), CDI for chemical-grade tonnage, terminal acceptance lists at both load and discharge ports, P&I club standing, flag and class status, charterer-specific age and condition rules, and sanctions exposure across owner, beneficial owner, manager, and prior trading. Vetting is not a post-fix formality. It dictates which ships are even in the conversation, and missing it costs charterers fixtures or, worse, port rejections after laycan.

Tanker chartering is part of Bulkargo’s ship brokering practice. Our team brokers tanker fixtures across crude oil, clean and dirty petroleum products, residual fuel oil, and edible and industrial vegetable oils. We cover the full tanker stack: from VLCC on long-haul crude through Suezmax, Aframax, LR2, LR1, and MR product tankers down to coated Handysize tonnage on regional clean and vegoil routes.

On crude, we work cargo flows from the Middle East Gulf, West Africa, the US Gulf, the North Sea, and the Mediterranean. On clean products, the bulk of fixtures are gasoline blendstocks, ULSD and diesel, jet A1, naphtha, and reformate moving on MR and LR tonnage. On dirty products, we fix fuel oil grades (HSFO, LSFO, VLSFO), vacuum gas oil, and slurry where previous-cargo compatibility allows. On vegoils, the focus is palm, sunflower, soybean, and rapeseed parcels into India, the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe. The line between clean petroleum and chemical-grade liquids blurs at the edges (base oils, biodiesel feedstocks, certain solvents), and those parcels run through our specialised products desk. Charter modalities follow the trade: voyage charter priced on Worldscale or a lump sum for spot crude and product cargoes, time charter for charterers running ongoing programmes, and contract of affreightment for refiners, trading houses, and integrated oil companies covering annual lifting commitments without exposing a single voyage to spot volatility.

Coverage spans the main tanker corridors tracked in our routes and markets view.

Caribbean and US Gulf interface. Clean and dirty product flows between US Gulf refineries, Reficar and Ecopetrol terminals on the Colombian Caribbean coast, regional storage hubs (St. Eustatius, Bahamas, Curaçao), and onward to Latin America, West Africa, and Europe. MR and LR1 tonnage dominates, with Aframax on the dirty side. Short-haul economics, storage arbitrage plays, and STS operations are routine. Cuba, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, and the broader island market round out regional product demand.

MEG to Far East is the dominant long-haul crude trade. VLCC is the standard, with a one-way voyage in the order of 25 days from Ras Tanura or Fujairah to Ningbo, Yeosu, or Chiba. Clean products move out of the Middle East refining cluster to Asia on LR1 and LR2 tonnage, with naphtha and gasoil arbitrages running both eastbound and westbound depending on price.

West Africa to US Gulf and Europe is largely Suezmax and Aframax crude business out of Nigeria, Angola, and Equatorial Guinea. Nigerian light sweet grades suit complex refineries in the US Gulf and Mediterranean. Voyages run roughly 14 to 20 days depending on discharge range.

US Gulf to Europe and Latin America is the heart of the Atlantic clean product market. MR and LR2 tankers move gasoline, diesel, and jet from the Houston/New Orleans corridor to Europe, Brazil, and the West Coast of South America. Crude moves the other way on Aframax and Suezmax where US light tight oil suits European or Asian refiners.

Intra-Asia products is high-frequency MR and Handysize business with multiple fixings a week. Singapore, the western Indian coast, South Korea, and the Chinese east coast form a dense triangular product market with short voyages and tight laycans.

Southeast Asia vegoils to India, MENA, and Europe is the heated-tank specialty. Palm oil and palm olein from Dumai, Belawan, and Pasir Gudang move on MR and Handysize coated tankers into Kandla, Mundra, Rotterdam, and the eastern Mediterranean. Sunflower oil from the Black Sea and soybean oil from South America complete the global edible-oil picture.

Across all of these corridors, COA structures are how refiners, integrated majors, and large trading houses lock in annual lifting from a defined load range without committing to specific voyages up front. A typical COA covers a fixed number of cargoes over twelve months, with a vessel nomination window for each lifting and an agreed pricing mechanism (often WS-linked with a floor or cap). For repeat shippers, COA is the structural layer; voyage fixtures fill the gaps.