China’s Unipec tops dirty tanker market share in 2014, Shell second

China’s Unipec retained its top spot among dirty tanker charterers in 2014 with 7.8% of total fixtures in the market, shipbrokers Poten & Partners said in a report released over the weekend.

With 815 spot fixtures across the dirty tanker segments in 2014, Unipec moved 177 million mt of cargo or 14% of the total volume moved last year.

Shell, which dominated the rankings over the past few years, came second in the 2014 list with 758 fixtures.

After placing fourth in the 2013 rankings, Vitol secured third place with 571 fixtures, followed by BP with 522 fixtures.

BP was third in the 2013 list.

Others in the top 10 included Chevron with 419 fixtures, ExxonMobil with 397, Total with 355 and Litasco with 349 fixtures.

PetroChina had 326 fixtures, followed by Repsol with 295.

There were a total of 10,479 spot dirty tanker fixtures in 2014 to move 1,273 million mt of cargo, according to the report.

The top 20 companies in terms of fixtures had a combined 65% share in the total chartering activity in this market. These companies handled two-thirds of the volumes moved in dirty tankers.

The biggest leap in spot chartering activity for dirty tankers was by Italy’s ENI at 15th place, up from 23rd in 2013.

US refiner Valero dropped out of the top 20 in 2014.

“Unipec further expanded its dominant position in VLCCs,” the report said. “With 566 reported fixtures, or 28.4% of the total, it was more than the next five VLCC charterers combined.”

The report estimated that together, Chinese companies had approximately 40% share in the reported spot market for VLCCs, which typically move 2 million barrels of crude or fuel oil each.

In VLCCs, PetroChina took the second spot after Unipec.

India’s Reliance and IOC took the third and fourth spots, respectively. Other companies in the top 10 in VLCC chartering activity were ExxonMobil, Shell, S-Oil, GS Caltex, Day Harvest and Bahri, the report said.

Unlike VLCCs, where the market is dominated by Chinese companies, reported spot market fixtures for Suezmaxes were more evenly distributed among the main charterers, the report said.

In terms of the number of fixtures, no company had a market share of more than 10% in the spot market for Suezmaxes, which typically move 1 million barrels of crude or fuel oil.

Chevron ranked first in Suezmax fixtures, up from fifth in 2013.

Atlantic charterers such as Shell, Vitol and BP continue to dominate the Aframax market.

At the same time, charterers from Russia and the former Soviet Union also have a presence in the Aframax segment with companies such as Litasco, Socal and Clearlake moving significant volumes of crude and fuel oil in traditional markets along the Baltic and Black seas.