oil tanker
Sign in to saveAlso known as petroleum tanker, product tanker, crude tanker, crude oil tanker
tanker designed for the transport of petroleum
Key facts
- Name
- Oil tanker
- Subclasses
- Handysize , Panamax , Aframax , Suezmax , Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC), Ultra Large Crude Carrier (ULCC)
- Built
- c. 1863–present
- Active
- 4,024 (above 10,000 long tons deadweight (DWT)); 396 above 300,000 DWT.
- Type
- Tank ship
- Tonnage
- up to 550,000 DWT
- Notes
- Rear house, full hull, midships pipeline
via Wikipedia infobox
~40 min read
Encyclopedic overview
An oil tanker, also known as a petroleum tanker, is a ship designed for the bulk transport of oil or its products. There are two basic types of oil tankers: crude tankers and product tankers. Crude tankers move large quantities of unrefined crude oil from its point of extraction to refineries. Product tankers, generally much smaller, are designed to move refined products from refineries to points near consuming markets.
Oil tankers are often classified by their size as well as their occupation. The size classes range from inland or coastal tankers of a few thousand metric tons of deadweight (DWT) to ultra-large crude carriers (ULCCs) of 550,000 DWT. Tankers move approximately 2.0 billion metric tons (2.2 billion short tons) of oil every year. Second only to pipelines in terms of efficiency, the average cost of transport of crude oil by tanker amounts to only US$5 to $8 per cubic metre ($0.02 to $0.03 per US gallon).
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “oil tanker” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.