Rate Assessments: Rates assessments are made daily. Rates are based either on the Worldscale system or a US dollar lumpsum quote. Lumpsums, the cost of fixing a tanker expressed in dollar terms, are used more often in assessing clean tanker rates. Fixtures can be made using either method, but there isn't necessarily a precedent to follow.

Cargo sizes that don't exactly match those listed within the rates table may be pro-rated and the equivalent rates used as a guide to any relevant rates change.

2- ABBREVIATIONS

Dirty products:

Clean products:

3- DIRTY TANKERS: CHARTERING MARGINS TABLE

The Chartering Margins Table indicates a "profit margin" based on the difference between the latest spot price for four selected blends of crude oil, and their cracking yields at refineries in Houston and Rotterdam. The $/bbl column shows this refining margin for each crude. (The source of the prices and the cracking yields is Platts Crude Oil Marketwire from the day before each Dirty Tanker table is published.) The column headed "WS" offers the equivalent for the $/bbl figure in terms of the relevant WS flat rate: i.e., a "maximum" Worldscale rate the charterer can pay and still break even when a given crude is shipped to a Houston/Rotterdam refinery. This is reached by converting the $/bbl figure into a $/mt and expressing it as a percentage of a composite Worldscale flat rate for representative voyages. The columns headed -1 and -7 days show the changes in the $/bbl margin from the day before, and the previous week.

4- CLEAN TANKERS: REGIONAL PRICE DIFFERENCES

The Regional Price Differences table computes arbitrage values using Platts product price assessments, and converting them into the equivalent Worldscale value. The table shows the differences in product prices between various regions and converts the same figure into Worldscale to show the maximum shipping rate at which products can be profitably transported from one market to another.