A Study On COSCO's Tanker Fleet Development

Ever since China's reform and opening to the world, accompanying the nation's sustaining and fast economic growth, China's demand for energy, oil in particular, increased continually. But the slow increase of domestic oil output couldn't meet the needs for oil consumption. It's estimated that, by 2005 and 2010, the gap between China's oil supply and oil demand can reach 100 million tons and 150 million tons respectively. Such a giant gap can only be balanced by importing. But at present China's tanker fleet can't at all undertake the mission of oil import shipping. That makes it a realistic and urgent issue for COSCO to grasp the opportunity and establish a taker fleet as soon as possible which is big enough to take on China's oil import shipping. The aim of this thesis is to discuss and inquire into the development target fleet structure and development procedure for COSCO's future tanker fleet.In the year 2000, COSCO set such a developing strategy for its tanker fleet; based on China's oil import shipping, seeking business opportunity worldwide, and putting the emphasis on large tanker fleet development. Therefore, after a necessary analysis and forecast of globe oil flow amount and flow direction, the thesis emphatically discusses the internal oil shipping market status and other relevant factors. The contents include China's oil production-consumption status and development trend % ports' oil loading/unloading conditions, the effects of China's entering WTO and the adjustment of China's energy consumption policy on oil shipping market, the prospect of China's future seaborne oil shipping.COSCO Group's tanker fleet development is also confronted with challenges from domestic same trade. Minghua of China Merchants Group, China Shipping Group Oil Shipping Co. and Nanjing Changjiang Oil Shipping Co. are the main three competitive oil snipping companies in China. They are also struggling to earn bigger market shares. So it's also an important content of this thesis to discuss their current fleet status and development trend.On the base of these discussion mentioned above, the thesis brings forward COSCO's tanker fleet development policy. This is the core of this study. It contains fleet development aim, future fleet structure and development procedure. Although this is just a thesis for master graduation, it can be helpful for COSCO in its practical manipulations.