Technical & Economical Discussion On VLCC And Operating Strategies Of COSCO

During the past 10 more years, the high economic growth rates in China have brought on the fast growth for oil demand. As oil output could not keep pace with economic growth, china had to rely on oil import to make up the gap between supply and demand. Through year 2000 and 2002, annual crude oil imports all exceeded 60m tons in China. But presently, China's tanker fleet can't at all undertake the mission of oil import shipment, and as a result, foreign tanker fleets mainly occupied the deep-sea transportation of China's oil imports. In this instance, COSCO decided to develop VLCC fleet. With such a background, this paper carries out the technical and economical discussion on VLCC ship style suitable for China's crude oil imports. It also discusses VLCC operating strategies for COSCO.The paper calculates and compares the operating effects on typical worldwide routes among 173 tankers, then selects the best ship styles for shipowners' reference. The results also indicate that VLCC is appropriate for long distance sea borne crude oil transportation, and thus, China should make the best use of VLCC to ship importing crude oil henceforth.By adopting SWOT analyzing, the paper amply discusses the strengths and weaknesses that COSCO confronts when developing VLCC fleet, as well as the opportunities and threats. Based on the analysis, the paper brings forward COSCO's VLCC operating strategies, with aims of improving the operating level of VLCC and securing the healthy development of VLCC fleet for COSCO.