Platts to reflect Bonny, Dalia dual port loadings for West Africa-India VLCC freight assessments

Effective April 1, 2021, S&P Global Platts will specify that its VLCC freight assessments for West Africa-East Coast India and West Africa-West Coast India reflect a dual port loading basis of Bonny, Nigeria and Dalia, Angola.

Platts first proposed this in a subscriber note published Jan. 20, 2021: https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/our-methodology/subscriber-notes/012021-platts-proposes-to-amend-west-africa-to-india-lumpsum-dirty-tanker-assessments-to-basis-bonny-dalia-dual-loading

Platts understands that VLCC freight rates on both the West Africa-to-West Coast India and West Africa-to-East Coast India routes can vary significantly according to loading ports, with ports in Nigeria and Cameroon typically charging a premium compared with ports in Angola.

Given that VLCCs typically have dual-port loadings and hence reflect port costs from two loading locations, the Platts VLCC lumpsum freight assessments for West Africa-to-West Coast India and West Africa-to-East Coast India will reflect dual-port loadings at Bonny and Dalia, in order to reflect the variability of port costs in the loading region.

Platts may publish price information, including fixtures, involving other load ports or load port combinations, but this may be normalized to the stated dual port basis for assessment purposes.

The affected assessments are:

Assessment Wsc Code $/mt Code Wsc Mavg Code $/mt Mavg Code

Dirty West Africa-East Coast India 260kt TDWEI00 TDWAI00 TDWEI03 TDWAI03

Dirty West Africa-West Coast India 260kt TDWAX00 TDWAW00 TDWAX03 TDWAW03

These assessments are published in the Dirty Tankerwire; on Platts Global Tanker pages 1970 and 1971, Platts Shipping Alert pages 1440 and 1441, and Platts Global Alert page 919; as well as in the Platts price database under the codes above.

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