Beijing: According to a report released by Poten & Partners, Unipec has overtaken Shell’s position and become the top spot dirty tanker charterer in 2012.
Unipec saw an increase of over 20% in its spot fixtures with 707 spot fixtures across the dirty tanker segments in 2012. Shell, which has dominated the rankings over the past few years, has ended up in the second place with 701 fixtures.
"Unipec has risen to the top of the ranks, on the back of a very active year chartering VLCCs, knocking perennial top charterer Shell from the top spot in this year's rankings," Poten & Partners said in its report.
Chinese companies continued to dominate the chartering of VLCCs in 2012, taking 32% of all VLCC fixtures and moving 2m barrels of crude or fuel oil.
Unipec topped the VLCC chartering list with 527 fixtures last year while PetroChina took the second spot with 148 fixtures.
"Unipec was once again the most active VLCC spot charterer in 2012, with more reported fixtures than the next four most active charterers combined," Poten & Partners said.
Vitol and Shell have become the top suezmax spot charterer and aframax spot charterer respectively in 2012. [09/01/13]
