Dude, Where’s My Tanker?
October 9th, 2017
By TankerTrackers.com
Ever come out of a brand new mall after a hectic afternoon shopping for Christmas presents and not remember where you parked your car? Yeah, that happens to the best of us. Now imagine losing an Ultra-Large Crude Carrier (ULCC) supertanker, a 380 meter long vessel. There are only a handful of them in the world as most supertankers (Very Large Crude Carriers or VLCCs) tend to be 300–330 meters in length. When you have 3.5 million barrels of oil aboard a vessel (worth nearly $200 million) and your clients can’t spot it on a live tracking map, they start making angry phone calls.
As each vessel is outfitted with an AIS (Automated Identification System) transceiver that notifies its unique ID, location, direction, speed and vessel (draught) depth in order to avoid collision, we have seen that sometimes they stop working for whatever reason and the tanker falls off the map entirely. Here’s a fairly recent case:
OK, so now that vessel data wasn’t available via AIS, what else could we use? Let’s try satellite imagery! Our choice is Planet as they’re the only public provider offering clear daily images. We zoomed in on Singapore as the “TI EUROPE” ULCC supertanker had this Far East city-state advertised it as its destination. Singapore is by far one of the world’s largest trading hubs, located on a very sharp curve between the Straits of Malacca and the South China Sea. Each day, roughly 20% of the world’s oil passes its waters, bound for China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines.
The bad news with Singapore is that there are anywhere up to 2,000 vessels there. The good news is, we’re looking for one of the largest ones. So, how did we find it? Fairly simple. Well….almost. First, we looked up the vessel dimensions on MarineTraffic.com. We also queried for other ULCCs, and nothing showed up in Singapore. Second, we used the measurement scale on the bottom-right corner of Planet’s images to help us spot a 380 meter long vessel. Pro Tip: Cut a small piece of paper to help match the corresponding length on the map at the selected zoom level. It makes it easier to quickly qualify various vessels. Once you find it, make sure that the vessel’s width is also correct. Other clues will be color, placement of the helipad and deck house. In our case, we were very lucky because it was parked at an oil terminal! Next time we might not be so lucky, but we’ll definitely be prepared.
And that’s how it’s done. With Planet’s satellite imagery, we were able to locate vessels without their AIS broadcasting.
