Tanker Week 2023: Back in business!

Clarksons annual Tanker Week training course returned this November after a three-year break. Run over four days, the course provided insights on a broad range of commercial, legal, financial, regulatory and technical aspects of the global tanker industry.

The course was attended by 19 participants, travelling from Belgium, London, Switzerland and the UAE and is open to those in their early careers. Attendees comprised a mix of Clarksons' employees and representatives from global oil majors including ExxonMobil, Unipec, Lykiardopulo, Petroineos and Chevron.

The Tanker Week faculty of in-house and external speakers explained some of the industry fundamentals including how Worldscale works, how to read vessel position lists, how Tanker FFAs work and the growing impact of new technology and the green transition.

Although we were unable to run the popular ‘dragons’ den’ competition this year, the programme included a variety of group exercises focusing on a range of topics including: evaluation and TCE calcs; how to calculate demurrage and voyage calculations which enabled the four teams to compete to achieve a number of challenges.

The highlight of the programme was the chartering exercise which ran on day three. This challenged the four competing teams to resolve a theoretical scenario: the coverage of two West African crude oil export cargoes and, potentially, some third-party business by utilizing one owned Suezmax vessel and four time-chartered ships. The primary aim is to ensure that the two owned cargoes are covered whilst ensuring that fleet earnings are maximised via optimal scheduling of vessels within the fleet. If this was not hard enough, the teams had to negotiate with four of Clarksons expert tanker brokers! Nevertheless, the participants managed to navigate their way through the two-hour challenge with a smile on their faces.

This year’s winner of the ‘Jim Gretton memorial trophy’ for the most engaged participant was Rupert George form Lykiadopulo. The trophy is awarded in memory of Jim, a long-time employee of Shell and a former speaker on Tanker Week.  

Clarksons, Head of Learning and Development, Malcolm Willingale commented: