2010 Worldscale Rates to Include AtoBviaC Distance Tables

JOC Staff |
The 2010 Worldscale tanker flat rates, due to be published this week, have been calculated using round voyage distances taken from tables developed by AtoBviaC, the leading publisher of marine distance tables for the global shipping industry.

Accurate calculation of the distances between load port s and discharge ports is crucial to the consistency of the Worldscale rates and its decision to use AtoBviaC data reflects the trust this worldwide body has in the accuracy of these distances.

More significantly for the tanker trade, all distances used by Worldscale for the 2010 rates will be routed, where applicable, via the Gulf of Aden Transit Corridors.

Established in November 1952 by the London Tanker Brokers' Panel at the request of British Petroleum and Shell, Worldscale is a unified system of establishing the cost of shipping oil from one port to another by sea. Its table of published rates covers 320,000 voyage permutations from one or more loads to one or more discharge ports. The freight for a given ship and voyage is normally expressed as a percentage of the published rate and reflects the freight market demand at the time of fixing.

Bill Morris, Director of AtoBviaC, said shipowners were relying more and more on realistic distance tables. The industry needs to know what these distances are, to have confidence in their computation and to have immediate access to the calculation of new distances and routeings whenever they are required, he said.

While the route between two ports, appearing as a straight line on a chart or map, may look ideal, it may not necessarily be the correct route a ship should take when you consider issues such as traffic separation schemes and other navigational restrictions, he says.

AtoBviaC, which is the leading publisher of marine distance tables for the global shipping industry, was formed in 2003 by a group of Master Mariners and software developers whose unique combination of expertise - totalling more than 360 years marine experience between them - combined to produce these accurate and widely-used marine software applications.