China’s Unipec retains a firm grip in terms of global dirty spot chartering, according to annual figures compiled by New York tanker broker Poten & Partners. Poten’s annual top 20 chartering chart for 2021 looks very familiar to the 2020 version with similar overall cargo volumes and just one newcomer to the list, Hyundai from South Korea.
In terms of VLCC fixtures, Unipec dominates. With almost 700 reported fixtures, compared to 97 for second placed IOC and 70 for Shell in third spot, Unipec remains in a league of its own.
The suezmax sector showed significant movement in the relative rankings. Petrobras jumped from seventh in 2020 to first. Petrobras was not even in the top 10 in 2019.
Regarding aframaxes, Vitol remained number one spot, while Glencore dropped out of the top 10, making room for Aramco.
