KNOT secures charter for shuttle tanker in Brazil

Knutsen NYK Offshore Tankers AS (KNOT) has secured a time-charter contract with European oil major for a maximum 11-year period starting in the first quarter of 2017.

A shuttle tanker loads crude oil from floating production, storage, and offloading (FPSO) units in deepwater fields while maintaining a certain distance in the ocean, and then transports the oil to crude-oil storage units or petroleum storage stations on land.

The agreement is for a 152,000 DWT Suezmax shuttle tanker equipped with a class 2 dynamic-positioning system and a bow-loading system.

The tanker will be built by COSCO in Zhoushan, China, to shuttle crude oil produced from the Santos and Campos basins off Brazil.

Upon the start of this contract, the KNOT Group will have 31 shuttle tankers in operation or on order transporting crude oil from the North Sea and waters off Brazil and eastern Canada.