Giant Oil Tankers News

Oman Shipping Company (OSC) reported a $180 million profit in 2015. Tariq bin Mohammed Al Junaidi, chief executive officer of OSC has been quoted by  Oman News Agency saying that  achieving significant profit came as a result of the good performance of the operations of the company’s business in general. "The profit is a result of an improvement in the rental market of giant oil tankers (as a result of the decline in world oil prices ) resulting from the increase in oil supply in global markets," Al Junaidi  said. This profit will be used to develop and expand the company’s business during the coming period. Al Junaidi also noted that OSC has begun to make profit since the first year of its establishment and did not suffer from any losses…

According to a June 24 report from CanadaEast.com, Newfoundland and Labrador's environment minister is playing down concerns about crew reductions on tug boats that guide giant oil tankers in Placentia Bay. Concerns were raised by the Fish, Food and Allied Workers Union set off alarm bells in Placentia Bay, southwest of St. John's. The union complained that Transport Canada allowed North Atlantic to work with as few as two crew onboard tug boats — a captain or skipper and an engineer. But Johnson clarified that two-person tug boat crews are only permitted within the harbor primarily for docking and un-docking of product vessels, according to the report. (Source: CanadaEast.com)

According to KUNA, Bahrain-based Arab Shipbuilding and Repair Yard Company delivered an oil tanker to Kuwait Oil Tanker Company. The delivery ceremony was attended by Kuwaiti Ambassador to Bahrain Sheikh Azzam Mubarak Al-Sabah, Chairman of the Bahraini company Eid Abdullah Yussef, and Sheikh Ali Hamoud Al-Sabah, a representative of Kuwait Oil Tanker Company. Designed upon a request from the Kuwaiti company, the $5m tankers-6 is 35 meters long and nine meters wide, and has a crew of six sailors. It has lifting and haulage capacities of six tons and ten tons respectively. It is also equipped with updated systems able to separate water from oil in order to preserve sea environment.

According to AFP, Kuwait Oil Tanker Co. (KOTC) will soon order four giant oil tankers expected to cost some 500 million dollars, chairman Abdullah Al Rumi said on Wednesday. The new order was approved by the national oil conglomerate Kuwait Petroleum Corp. (KPC), and will be offered in a tender soon, Rumi told the official KUNA news agency. Each has a capacity of 300,000 tonnes and will replace old tankers in the company’s fleet of 24 vessels. KOTC signed three contracts in 2004 with South Korean companies to build seven new vessels at a cost of 540 million dollars. Delivery is expected to start next year. They include two very large crude carriers (VLCC), two liquefied petroleum gas tankers and three petroleum products vessels. Source: Business Times

Improvements to the Suez Canal will allow ships with a draft of up to 62 ft. to use the waterway by the end of next year, the chairman of the Suez Canal Authority (SCA) said The canal will be able to take ships with a draft of 66 ft. by 2005 and 72 ft. by 2010, Ahmed Fadhel said. "These drafts will enable the canal to accept giant oil tankers of up to 360,000 tons, which is currently the largest tanker weight in the world," he said. Fadhel said oil pipelines in the region that are now closed or operating below capacity could provide fierce competition for the Suez Canal if reopened or used to their full extent. "If political developments in the region lead these pipelines to operate at full capacity it will deprive the Suez Canal of most oil tankers," Fadhel said.