Chemical Tanker Operators News

AkzoNobel customers now have access to marine coatings data anytime, anywhere with the launch of AkzoNobel Marine Coatings’ International mobile app. The app provides customers with increased convenience and flexibility in accessing the company’s wealth of coatings data. It has been specially designed to provide access to application guides, technical datasheets, product brochures, information cards and regional contacts, as well as social media and blog posts. It is available on the Apple app store.

Inchcape Shipping Services (ISS), the world’s leading maritime and logistics service provider, has greatly expanded its European business with Team Tankers International with a new port agency contract across the region. Under the new agreement with the chemical tanker specialist, ISS will provide port agency and vessel clearance services in all major European ports and terminals. Team Tankers International is one of the largest chemical tanker operators in the world, with a fleet of over 40 chemical tankers. While ISS has been providing port agency for Team Tankers International since 2013, this new agreement will capitalise on ISS’ Europe-wide offices within its global network.

Norwegian tanker company Jo Tankers has confirmed it has received a statement of objections from the European Commission regarding an antitrust probe into bulk liquid shipping companies. The response follows a confirmation from peer Odfjell ASA that the EU Commission had begun formal investigations of it in an antitrust probe. The commission said earlier it had issued formal cartel charges against 'a number of' bulk liquid shipping companies, without naming them. In 2003, the four major chemical tanker operators in Europe -- Odfjell, Stolt-Nielsen Jo Tankers and Tokyo Marine in London -- announced that antitrust authorities raided their offices in Norway, the Netherlands and the UK, investigating a possible cartel.

Stolt-Nielsen and Odfjell, the two biggest chemical tanker operators, are among shipowners switching more of their vessels to carry gasoline to the U.S. to meet surging demand as the International Energy Agency releases fuel from its stockpiles. The conversions will avert a shortage of tankers to carry additional oil supplied by the agency, Jenkins said. The agency's 26 member nations plan to release 1.97 million barrels of oil a day for a 30-day period, of which 19 percent will be gasoline, the agency said. A jump in demand for tankers has pushed freight rates to near records after Hurricane Katrina disrupted production in the Gulf of Mexico, prompting oil companies and traders to move fuel across the Atlantic to profit from differences in prices between the regions.