London: The first ever LR3 tanker to transport naphtha cargo to the Far East has been chartered by Vitol, reports say.
Vitol is shipping 120,000-125,000 tonnes of low-sulphur naphtha onboard the Novo (150,000dwt, built 2012) from Ruwais to Japan on April 15-18, Platts reports.
Novo, a suezmax tanker with epoxy-coated tanks (LR3), is operated by Greece’s Dynacom Tankers and was fixed at a Worldscale rate of 110 points.
Few ports in the Far East will be able to accommodate such a large vessel, so the cargo will likely have to be lightered off, sources told the newswire, which accounts for the high freight rate.
The cargo is much bigger in volume than the 25,000- to 75,000-tonne cargoes that normally come out of the Persian Gulf, which is due to increased refining capacity at Ruwais following expansion work, the newswire said.
The Ruwais refinery now has naphtha capacity of 10m tpa, up from 5.5m tpa before the expansion.
