SPECIFICS OF CHEMICAL TANKERS FLEET AND ITS MARKET OUTLOOK

This paper introduces a general outlook of the chemical tanker market and examines the performance of chartering contracts over the period 2008 to 2013. The number of the liquid chemical cargoes has increased enormously since at the early days, the tanker market was expressing only for carriage of petroleum products. As long as the number of the carriage of chemical cargoes by sea are growing up rapidly, the study aim is to clarify peculiar and main characteristics of these tankers. Although, the big part of these chemical cargoes are extremely dangerous to the environment as well as to the life of the seafarers, it may be considered as a small risk due to the very high standards required regarding safety.

Apart of the technical point view, the chemical tanker market is forecasted and expected to recover and improve in/after 2014. The main evidence for this theory is that declining fleet growth, shrinking tonnage growth and increasing seaborne trade. Due to these influences, the market gives positive forecast for its short and near future. However, the chemical products market is still weaken enough and presently demand is still shaky, but due to the limited order books, it could be considered as a positive sign in medium period. Nevertheless, the fleet is still in overcapacity and expectations for improving is at the end of 2014 or later on. The purpose of this paper is to study on the present market and strive to forecast the future chemical tanker market situation