National Iranian Tanker Company - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

National Iranian Tanker Company (NITC) is a subsidiary of the National Iranian Oil Company

National Iranian Oil Company

The National Iranian Oil Company , a government-owned corporation under the direction of the Ministry of Petroleum of Iran, is an oil and natural gas producer and distributor headquartered in Tehran. It was established in 1948...

which was privatized in 2009. As at 2011, NITC was owned by funds managing pensions for 5 million Iranians. It is the biggest tanker company in the Middle East

Middle East

The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...

and 4th in the world. The company transports Iranian crude to export markets and also engages in cross-trading of crude oil cargoes for some 150 oil majors worldwide, including Royal Dutch Shell

Royal Dutch Shell

Royal Dutch Shell plc , commonly known as Shell, is a global oil and gas company headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands and with its registered office in London, United Kingdom. It is the fifth-largest company in the world according to a composite measure by Forbes magazine and one of the six...

, Total SA, Saudi Aramco and state-run producers in Kuwait

Kuwait

The State of Kuwait is a sovereign Arab state situated in the north-east of the Arabian Peninsula in Western Asia. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the south at Khafji, and Iraq to the north at Basra. It lies on the north-western shore of the Persian Gulf. The name Kuwait is derived from the...

and Abu Dhabi

Abu Dhabi

Abu Dhabi , literally Father of Gazelle, is the capital and the second largest city of the United Arab Emirates in terms of population and the largest of the seven member emirates of the United Arab Emirates. Abu Dhabi lies on a T-shaped island jutting into the Persian Gulf from the central western...

. NITC has a capacity of 11 million tons per year.

Facts and figures

NITC's revenues during the last Iranian year (ended March 20, 2009) reached $1.5 billion. 51 percent of the revenues came from Europe, 26 percent from Asia, 15 percent from Africa and 8 percent from other parts of the world, including Canada, Venezuela and Latin America.

NITC observes International Maritime Organization
International Maritime Organization
The International Maritime Organization , formerly known as the Inter-Governmental Maritime Consultative Organization , was established in Geneva in 1948, and came into force ten years later, meeting for the first time in 1959...

regulations. NITC has been awarded ISO 9002, ISO 14001 (for management), PMS (for maintenance and repair system), STCW (for maritime supervision systems) and ISMC (for maritime safety management).

Iran pumps about 4mn barrels per day to world markets, with roughly 60% bound for Asia and the remaining headed to Europe (2008).

In 2008, NITC transferred 103 million tons of petroleum products abroad.

Fleet

As at 2010, the company operated 28 Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCC), nine Suezmax

Suezmax

Suezmax is a naval architecture term for the largest ship measurements capable of transiting the Suez Canal, and is almost exclusively used in reference to tankers. Since the canal has no locks, the only serious limiting factors are draft , and height due to the Suez Canal Bridge...

and five Aframax

Aframax

An ' ship is an oil tanker smaller than and with a breadth above 32.31 m. The term is based on the Average Freight Rate Assessment tanker rate system. class tankers are largely used in the basins of the Black Sea, the North Sea, the Caribbean Sea, the China Sea and the Mediterranean...

tankers. It also owns three chemical vessels and a liquefied petroleum gas (LPG

LPG

LPG may stand for:* Liquefied petroleum gas* Laboratoire de Planetologie, Grenoble, France* Landwirtschaftliche Produktionsgenossenschaft * Llanfairpwll railway station, Wales; National Rail station code LPG.* LPG...

) carrier. As of January 2011, NITC has 46 tankers with an annual capacity of 10.6 million tons to be increase to 12.5 million tons by the end of the year.

Expansion

NITC has a huge project for replacing tankers, including the construction and purchase of 25 tankers with a total capacity of 6 million tons. In 2009, Iran

Iran

Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...

and South Korea

South Korea

The Republic of Korea , , is a sovereign state in East Asia, located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the East China Sea and Republic of China to the south...

's Daewoo

Daewoo

Daewoo or the Daewoo Group was a major South Korean chaebol . It was founded on 22 March 1967 as Daewoo Industrial and was dismantled by the Korean government in 1999...

signed a $128-million contract on tanker supply with a capacity to carry 2.1 million barrels of crude. The state-owned enterprise says it has ordered 16 other oil tankers that will join its current fleet of 45 carriers by 2011.

NITC expects by 2013 to have 74 ships of all sizes, including very large crude carriers, or VLCCs, and also smaller vessels. NITC will operate 50 VLCCs at that time, up from 28 in 2010. As at 2011, NITC ranks as the fifth-biggest tanker operator worldwide, with a total of 43 ships. Over the next two decades, Iran would need 500 new ships, including 120 oil tankers, 40 liquefied natural gas (LNG) carriers and over 300 commercial vessels.

In 2009, in a move aimed at further enhancing Iran's shipbuilding industry, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said he will ban the purchase of foreign ships by Iranian organizations.

Facts and figures

Fleet

Expansion

See also