The Reasons for Sea Transport

More of the world is covered by water than by land, so to have contact with other countries,
many of us are likely to have to travel across water. Historically, the first such movement was
for the purpose of people wishing to visit other places and to this day there are, of course,
many types of ships designed especially to carry people. However, we are not concerned with
such passenger ships at present.
Soon after our forefathers learned to travel across the water they realised that trading with
other countries was worthwhile, so goods began to be carried in ships: goods that we now call
in English 'cargo'. It is the present-day successors to those original cargo ships that this course
is about.
The reason for sea transport then, is for the purpose of carrying goods from one place to
another. The first question may then be 'why carry goods from one to another?' Very simply,
because the other place wants the goods that the first place can sell to them. The buyer
benefits from having the goods bought and the seller benefits from the proceeds of selling
them, and this is the basis of trade.
Absolute and Comparative Advantage

Absolute advantage
But why does a buyer in one country benefit from buying goods that another country
produces? An obvious reason is that the selling country has goods that the buyer's country
simply does not have. For example, oil is exported from the middle east, West Africa, some
parts of South America and the North Sea in Europe to countries that have no oil reserves of
their own.
The eighteenth century Scottish economist Adam Smith also realised that cost of production
enters into the picture: a country will export an item to other countries if it produces that item
more cheaply. An example of this is coal for use in the UK. Since the 1980s most of the UK's
coal mines have closed. British coal is in fact of a high quality and there are still substantial
coal reserves in the UK, but the pits have to be deep, the seams of coal may be thin and
fragmented and labour costs are high. Much of the coal now used in the UK is therefore
imported from Poland, Colombia and South Africa. The imported coal is of a lower quality,
but because it lies in huge seams close to the surface and because labour is relatively cheap,
the imported coal, even with the additional cost of sea transport, is still cheaper than the UK's
own coal.
Where one country has goods to sell to another that either it does not produce at all, or that it
can produce more cheaply, it is said to have absolute advantage.

Comparative advantage
But sea transport is not only used where there is an absolute advantage. The English
economist David Ricardo refined Adam Smith's idea and developed a theory of what he

called comparative advantage. The reasoning behind this is quite subtle, and is set out fully
in the Economics of Sea Transport and International Trade course. For our purposes here, it is
sufficient to say that comparative advantage explains why Korea, for example, might be the
world's low-cost producer of a good, yet still find it beneficial to import that good from
elsewhere, because Korea is even more productive in producing other goods.

Competitive advantage
Since Ricardo, many economists and business writers have taken the theory of comparative
advantage further, since it does not explain everything about international trade. For example,
some countries develop a particular expertise in one type of product, even if other countries
appear to have greater natural endowments of labour, capital or raw materials. This is
sometimes called competitive advantage. In the 1980s and 1990s, Japan's car industry began
producing high-quality, reliable cars for the export market, despite having virtually no
relevant raw materials of its own, and despite the long-established expertise in motor
manufacturing of Europe and the USA.

The basis for shipping business

So the purpose of sea transport is to facilitate trade, and trade takes place because one country
has absolute, comparative or competitive advantage in a raw material or product over another
country. Wherever demand exists and there is a suitable source of supply, trade will take
place (providing, of course, that the cost of the sea transport does not add too much to the end
price of the goods).
When people involved in trade need to use sea transport, they have to turn not only to those
who physically own their own ships but also to those who make all the arrangements for the
goods to be carried. Those are the people who are engaged in the business of shipping, and
much of this course will be about shipping business.
Shipping and Trades

Looking in more detail into the types of trades that use sea transport, the very first thing that
you must fix your mind on is that there are two very distinct types of cargo. There are, of
course, very many different commodities, but they all fall into one or other of these basic
divisions. They are:

raw materials (or semi raw materials) and

manufactured goods (or partly manufactured goods).

As this course proceeds you will be constantly aware that the first involves a different type of
ship and a different business approach from the second
What is meant by raw materials? A simple definition is that they are materials which have to
undergo a manufacturing process before being ready for use as an end product. That
definition does not always work, but it will suffice as a general rule for the time being.

One example has already been mentioned, namely coal. Another typical raw material is iron
ore: the heavy earth-like material which when heated with coke and limestone produces iron.
Of course wheat, maize and other grains are raw materials because they have to be ground
and cooked before they can be eaten. Here, of course, one encounters an apparent exception,
in that some grains are not ground and cooked but are used, untreated, for cattle food.
The sort of raw commodities mentioned so far have all been dry materials, and you should
think up other examples of such raw materials. You will have noticed that these materials
have one thing in common: something which is the same whether they are earthy types of
substance like coal or iron ore, or food materials like wheat or maize. The one thing that they
all have in common is that they can all be carried in bulk and most of them are either dropped
or poured into the ship.
Another thing they all have in common as far as the shipping industry is concerned is that, in
most cases, the whole ship is used for the same type of cargo and is usually specially
designed for that sort of material. In the case of dry cargo the ship used may well be a bulk
carrier. Some bulk carriers are even more specialised, in that they are designed to be ore
carriers. Of course some dry cargo moves in more general purpose ships, and there is more
detail about ship types later in this lesson.
Liquid Cargoes

Some raw materials come in liquid form, the most well known being oil. Much of the oil that
is transported by sea is crude oil, that is, oil just as it comes out of oil wells, out of the
ground. That is very much a raw material.
However, some of the oil that travels by sea has already undergone some manufacturing
process, though even something as refined as, say, diesel oil may still be regarded as a raw
material because it has to be burned in an engine before it does anything useful.
Liquid cargoes also have highly specialised ships and the general term for this type of ship is
a tanker. By the way, oil for burning or lubricating is not the only liquid to be carried in
tankers. Vegetable oils (such as those used to make margarine), chemicals, wine and orange
juice are all examples of other cargoes carried in liquid form usually in very specialised
ships
General Cargo

When manufactured goods travel by sea they are usually referred to as general cargo. This
type of cargo differs in many ways from the bulk cargo we have been discussing so far.
Manufactured goods seldom require the use of the whole ship: in fact they usually only need
a small portion of it. This is why they are called 'general cargo', because from the ship's point
of view the cargo is a general mixture of many different types of goods.

Break-bulk cargo
Some general cargo still moves in the same way as it did many years ago and is often referred
to as break-bulk or conventional cargo. The traditional method of carriage is for each item

of cargo, properly packed of course, to be loaded in the ship individually. It is a skilful task
for the ship's officers and the stevedores (the shore-based people who do the actual loading)
to plan a way to get the maximum into the ship without one piece of cargo damaging another.

Containers
Nowadays most general cargo, especially in long-distance liner trades, is not loaded piece by
piece directly into the ship. Instead it is loaded into standard sized boxes known as
containers. Containers generally have the same dimensions, based on a standard eight feet
(2.44 meters) wide, eight feet six inches (2.59 metres) high and either 20 feet (6.1 metres)
long or 40 feet (12.2 metres) long. Some containers have rather different dimensions to suit
specialist trades, but the vast majority conform to this rule.
Because of American influence in the early days of containerisation, containers still conform
to feet and inches measurements, although many countries now use the metric system.
Standardisation of container dimensions means that all the equipment used can also be
standardised. Trucks and rail wagons can be built to carry any container and the port
equipment used to move containers around can all cope in the same way. The same applies to
shore-based cranes, whether they are simple or highly advanced.
Specialised containers

Although virtually all containers have the same basic dimensions, there are many different
types. As well as a simple box with doors at the end for loading cargo, there are arrangements
such as the following:

open-top containers which allow for cargo that can only be lifted by crane,
with a tarpaulin cover to keep the weather out

tanks can be designed to fit within the basic frame, enabling a wide
variety of liquids to be moved in bulk

very cumbersome cargo may be carried on a simple platform designed to

fit into the standard slots

insulated containers with their own, built-in, refrigeration units for carrying
perishable or even frozen goods.

The list of different types of containers is long, but the mostly comply with the basic outside
dimensions and can go through the common system. There is very little cargo in the world
that cannot be transported in containers
Ship Features

Before going into more detail about types of cargo ships let us consider what features are
common to all of them.
All ships have a main body or hull, made of steel but with certain basic characteristics that
are remarkably similar to the way ships have always been built. There is a frame which

determines the shape and then a covering, which today is a series of steel plates welded
together instead of the planks of wood that our ancestors used. The shape is designed to
combine the maximum cargo-carrying capacity with the best shape for moving through the
water easily.
Covering in this basic open hull is the deck, which stops the sea from flooding in. In the case
of a dry-cargo ship this has openings through which cargo can be loaded and discharged;
these are the hatches, which have removable covers. The hatches lead to the holds: separate
compartments into which the hull is divided. The frames in the lowest part of the hold are
covered by a horizontal floor, which is nowadays referred to as the tank top, because in most
modern ships the space between the floor and the bottom of the ship is used to house ballast
water or fuel tanks.
Bulk carriers only have the one deck, but dry cargo ships used for a variety of purposes often
have a second deck, sometimes more, called the tweendeck.
Part of the hull, usually at the rear (the stern) or sometimes nearer the centre of the ship
(amidships) is set aside for the machinery. This includes the main engine which turns the
propeller to drive the ship along in the water, while other machinery provides the ship with
electric power and various additional services to make life as pleasant as possible for the
crew.
Ship Propulsion

Diesel engines
Ships' main engines are usually diesel engines, which work on the same principle as large
truck engines. A very large container ship, bulker or tanker usually has a single two-stroke
diesel engine linked directly to a very large propeller. Most of these large engines run at a low
speed of between 95 and 127 rpm, which means that they do not need a gearbox. Small ships
are usually fitted with medium speed four-stroke engines, sometimes in pairs, driving one or
two propellers through gearboxes.

Diesel-electric propulsion
Diesel-electric propulsion, in which several diesel engines run as generators producing
electricity to power an electric motor that drives the propeller, used to be almost exclusively
found on cruise ships but is now becoming more popular on cargo ships as well. There may
still be a few steam engines in existence, but these will be very rare as they have a greater
fuel consumption in relation to power output than diesel engines.

Liquid Natural Gas

A large percentage of the fleet of Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) carriers used to transport
methane are equipped with steam turbines powered by burning part of the cargo. This may
sound surprising, but LNG has to be transported at very low temperatures and even with
effective insulation, some of the cargo boils off during the voyage.

It is this boil-off gas that is used for powering the ship, and unless this was reliquified (which
requires expensive extra equipment on the ship) it would otherwise be lost to the atmosphere.
In these ships, the steam turbine is used to produce electricity and the ship's propeller is
powered by a large electric motor.
The rising demand for LNG means that burning it as fuel is generally uneconomic. Around
half of the LNG carriers built since 2005 have either diesel engines directly linked to the
propeller or a diesel-electric propulsion system. Some ships even have a special form of
diesel engine that can run on either fuel oil or LNG boil-off.
Superstructure and Other Features

All cargo ships have a superstructure, built upwards above the level of the deck, much of
which is needed for the crew's living quarters, eating and recreation rooms as well as storerooms and sometimes a special area like a miniature hospital. The superstructure also has a
vital part of the ship built into it: the bridge, from which the ship is controlled. The bridge
contains the controls for steering the ship and has very wide windows to ensure maximum
visibility. It also contains various devices such as radar, satellite navigation and echo
sounding to enable the ship to be guided (navigated), as well as arrangements for
communicating with the engine room.
Some ships have lifting equipment to load and discharge the cargo. On a modern ship the
lifting equipment is almost always cranes of some type or another, but older ships may be
equipped with derricks and winches instead. Other ships depend entirely on shore appliances
for this purpose.
Tankers do not have hatches: their decks are completely sealed over except for small, lidded
openings to allow access for cleaning their tanks etc, as well as suitable ventilation pipes. A
tanker's deck is usually covered in a complicated system of pipework to enable loading and
discharging or transfer between different sections (tanks) of the vessel. The point at which
hoses from the shore are connected to the ship's pipes is called the manifold. Next to the
manifold there is a hose handling crane to lift the heavy hoses from the shore so that they can
be connected or disconnected
The Main Types of Ship

When dealing with dry-cargo ships you will encounter the expressions tramps and liners.
The world 'tramp' derives from a British expression describing a person with no fixed home,
who tramps from place to place in search of food and shelter (in USA a hobo). When used to
describe ships it is the 'from place to place' with no fixed schedule that applies; there is no
suggestion that such ships are disreputable: far from it in many cases. With so many dry cargo
ships now highly specialised, the expression is inappropriate in most cases, but it is still used.
Liners, as the name implies, keep to a schedule of ports and frequency.

The Bulk Carrier

Earlier in this section different types of ships were mentioned and perhaps the simplest design
to consider first is the bulk carrier. This is the type of ship designed to carry cargo that can
easily be dropped or poured into it. Do not confuse the word 'pour' with liquids; almost all
grain is poured into a ship using a conveyor, which is often an endless belt type of device.
Grain is usually discharged by using a suction apparatus which is rather like a giant vacuum
cleaner. The largest bulk carriers and ore carriers are gearless, that is to say they have no
winches, derricks or cranes and depend entirely on shore appliances for loading and
discharging. This is because in most places where such cargoes are handled the terminals
have very advanced machinery designed for the quickest possible loading or discharging.
Medium size and smaller bulk carriers, on the other hand, are usually equipped with cargo
loading/discharging gear.

Panamax
Some bulk carriers are very large ships. If the shipowner wants as big a ship as possible but
wants to trade quickly between the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, he will want the
largest ship that can pass through the Panama Canal: such a ship is referred to as Panamax
size. There are restrictions imposed by the man-made sections of the Panama Canal that limit
the length and width (beam) of the ship, as well as the depth of the ship in the water (called
the draught or draft). This means that dry cargo Panamax ships can carry a maximum of
between 60,000 and 70,000 tonnes. This is known as their deadweight cargo capacity
(dwcc) (the maximum weight of actual cargo the ship can carry).
The Panama Canal Authority has a project in place to expand the capacity of the canal, and
some work has already been done in widening and deepening certain sections. In October
2006 the country voted on plans to build new sets of locks and as a result new locks are being
constructed. These locks will have chambers 427m (1,400') long by 55m (180') wide, and
18.3m (60') deep. They have been designed to take the largest vessels projected to be used by
trades which could benefit from using the Panama Canal. The term for this size of vessel is
Post-Panamax.

Suezmax
The Suez Canal is a far simpler system and has, in fact, been widened and deepened on
various occasions since it was constructed in 1893. Thus a ship with a draft not greater than
52 feet 6 inches (17 metres) would qualify for the description Suezmax.

Capesize
Shipowners who have no intention of using waterways like the Suez Canal or the Panama
Canal are only limited in size by the ports they intend to use. Such ships are often described
as Capesize, since if they are travelling from Asia to Europe but do not intend to use the Suez
Canal, they will sail around South Africa's Cape of Good Hope. The name Capesize is usually
applied to ships which have a deadweight cargo capacity (dwcc) of over 100,000 tonnes but
many are larger than this, even as great as 250,000 dwcc.

Ore and Combination Carriers

There are two more specialised types of bulk carrier to consider. First is the ore carrier. You
may wonder why materials like iron ore cannot simply use a normal bulk carrier. The reason
is that iron ore is a very heavy material, so the amount of space it needs per tonne is far less
than the same weight of, say, wheat. Also, because iron ore is very heavy it needs a rather
stronger type of ship. Shipowners who intend to specialize in transporting iron ore therefore
buy ships designed to deal with the heavy weight of the intended cargo. Ore carriers can be
even bigger than other types of bulk carrier, the largest exceeding 300,000 dwcc.

Combination carriers
Some shipowners look to trade in routes where there is dry cargo in one direction and oil in
the other. For this they operate ore/oil carriers. As the name suggests, these ships are
divided, with holds for iron ore and tanks for oil. There are also ore/bulk/oil carriers
(OBOs) whose cargo holds have the strength to carry ore but the space to carry lighter
cargoes, plus the ability to carry oil. The advantage of these combination carriers is that by
combining two or more roles they avoid the problem that plagues the most highly specialised
ships, ie, that cargo tends to be available only in one direction, which means returning empty
to their loading ports. They do not, in fact return empty, because with no weight in the holds a
ship would float so high in the water that it would be unsafe and unmanageable. However, the
use of these ships has fallen from favour and few remain.
Smaller Bulk Carriers

Bulk carriers are not all huge ships; they come in all sizes, even down to 1,000 tonnes dwcc.
For example, you may encounter the expression handy-size bulk carrier, which is the term
loosely used to describe ships of about 20,000 to 50,000 dwcc. Such ships are more likely to
be equipped with on-board cargo handling gear. Between the handy-size and the Panamax
ships, the gap is filled by Handymax vessels.
General Purpose Ships

This term is usually applied to 'tweendeckers, which are sometimes referred to as multipurpose ships. The word 'tweendecker' comes from the fact that these ships have decks fitted
between the floor of the ship and the main weather deck. They usually come in sizes between
5,000 and 25,000 tonnes dwcc.

Cargo types
General purpose ships are ideally suited to such things as bagged, cased or drummed cargo.
The extra deck or decks creates more floor space and easier access for stowing packages of
cargo without having to pile them too high. Apart from the question of access, piling too
many packages one on the other may result in the lower layers being crushed.
Such mixed types of cargo also need to be capable of identification, so some form of
separation is needed as well as the need to secure the cargo against movement during the

voyage. Tweendeckers do also carry bulk cargo, but not in the major bulk trades because their
tween decks and generally small size would not suit the large loading and discharging
appliances used in the major bulk terminals. A small number of modern multi-purpose ships
have tweendecks that can be folded flat against the sides of the hull to allow easier handling
of bulk cargo. The bulk trades to which general purpose ships are more suitable include such
materials as fertilizers as well as grains (such as maize, wheat, barley) to smaller ports than
those that the big bulk carriers could reach.

On-board gear
The foregoing are only examples of the types of cargoes carried by such vessels because, as
their name implies, they carry anything for which the specialised ships are not suitable. These
ships almost always have cranes or winches and derricks so that they are independent of
shore equipment. Such cargo gear is often limited to a 10 tonnes safe working load (SWL)
per lift, although this can be up to 25 tonnes per lift. If they intend to operate in the container
feeder business they need cranes with a capacity of 30 tonnes in order to cope with the weight
of 40 foot containers.

Heavy lift ships

Heavy lift ships are very similar in design to multi-purpose ships but are specially constructed
to carry heavy loads such as very large pieces of machinery. This requires strengthened decks
and cranes that can lift much more than the multi-purpose ship. These ships usually have two
cranes, each capable of lifting around 200 tonnes alone or 400 tonnes when working in
tandem. One such ship has cranes that can lift 600 tonnes apiece or 1,200 tonnes when
worked together.

General purpose ships in the tramp and liner trades

General purpose ships are typical 'tramps', and unlike specialist bulk carriers, tramp owners
always hope to find their next cargo at or very close to where they have discharged the
current one. Although such ships have adequate ballasting arrangements, ballast voyages do
not earn money, so tramp owners like to keep such voyages as short as possible.
Container Ships

Apart from the minor feeder routes, almost all containers now move in specially constructed
container ships. The capacity of container ships is referred to not in tonnes but in TEUs. TEU
stands for Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit, so a forty-foot container would be two TEUs.

Container ship sizes

Container ships range in size from a few hundred TEU to the latest generation of mega
carriers, with capacities of around 18,000 TEU.

The development of containerisation

Until the end of the first half of the 20th century, all general cargo was carried as it was
presented by the shippers, suitably packed of course. This meant that ships spent a very long

time in port loading and stowing each individual item in such a way that it would be easily
accessible when time came for it to be discharged. A ship does not earn money when it is
standing still, so there was little point in designing bigger and faster ships if they were to be
idle for half their life.
A solution to the problem of how to reduce port time was urgent. The solution was
'containerisation' and international agreement on the use of standard sized boxes, all with the
same corner fittings. Cargo could then be loaded into these boxes before the ship arrived, the
boxes then loaded into the ship and discharged from it very quickly indeed, leaving the
removal of the cargo from the containers to take place after the ship's departure.

The benefits
The speed of loading and discharging containers solved the problem of ships spending a long
time in port. Loading cargo in the 1940s achieved a productivity of between 1 and 2 tonnes
per man hour. With the introduction of pallets and fork-lift trucks in the late 1950s,
productivity in some ports went up to between 4 and 5 tonnes per man hour; upon its
introduction, containerisation raised productivity to 30 tonnes per man hour.
That figure has now been significantly improved upon with container cranes now loading a
40 foot container every 60 seconds. Given that a container can hold approximately 22 tonnes
of cargo, the benefits of containerisation are clear to see.
Other Dry Cargo Ships

Bulk carriers, multi-purpose vessels and container ships are not the only types of vessels used
to carry dry cargo. There are also refrigerated or reefer ships, ro-ro vessels and car
carriers. Reefers are used to carry fruit, meat and fish at very low temperatures. They are
similar in design to multi-purpose ships but have insulated cargo spaces and refrigerating
plant to keep the temperature at optimum conditions. When not being used for refrigerated
cargoes, these ships can carry general cargo to stay employed.
Ro-ro ships (Roll on Roll off) are called such because they carry wheeled cargo. The cargo
can be trucks, cars or buses or the like, or even lorries carrying cargo on trailers. Generally
they run on liner routes over relatively short distances. Car carriers, mostly referred to as
PCCs (pure car carriers) or PCTCs (pure car/truck carriers) are easily identified by their
very high flat sides. These ships are nothing more than floating multi-storey car parks and are
used to carry most of the world's trade in cars and other vehicles. They have a great many
decks (12-14 is not unknown), some of which may be adjustable to accommodate high
vehicles in PCTCs.
Tankers

A large proportion of raw materials in bulk are liquid cargoes, and while many different
liquids are transported in tankers, the chief among them is, of course, oil. Two basic types of
tankers cover the main parts of the international oil industry.

World-wide consumption of oil increased rapidly once the effects of the Second World War
had been shaken off, and it soon became economically and politically expedient to transport
crude oil from ports close to the oil wells and to refine it into useable products at ports close
to the major areas of consumption, rather than to do the refining close to the oil wells.
Crude Oil Carriers

Subject only to the restrictions on size discussed under bulk carriers, economies of scale
dictate that crude oil should be carried in the biggest ships possible. 15,000 tonnes dwcc was
considered large in the 1940s, but within ten years the so-called 'super-tanker' emerged
carrying 50,000 tonnes. By the mid-60s the world saw the emergence of 200,000 tonnes
tankers which earned the name Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCCs).
With the closure of the Suez Canal in 1967 due to the war in the Middle-East, the long route
from the Middle East to Europe via the Cape of Good Hope encouraged the design of even
bigger ships many of over 350,000 tonnes. The largest had a capacity of over 555,000 tonnes.
These monsters are the Ultra Large Crude Carriers (ULCCs).
In 1973 there was further conflict in the Middle East. The oil producing countries in that
region came together as OPEC (Oil Producing Exporting Countries) and used the price of oil
as war strategy. They succeeded in imposing a four-fold increase in the price of crude oil
which inevitably caused a radical reduction in the world-wide consumption of oil. This in
turn inevitably reduced the demand for tanker capacity, so no-one was interested in further
increases in tanker sizes. Several ULCCs and VLCCs could find no employment and had to
be laid up: it was cheaper for the owner to park the vessel in some cheap and convenient port
without crew and other operating costs rather than trade the ship at such low rates that a
considerable financial loss would result.
Until the late 20th century, most tankers were built with a single skin hull but because of
concerns over pollution it is now mandatory for all tankers to be built with a double hull. The
space between the outer and inner hulls can be used for ballast water but not for bunker fuel.
Product Carriers

Crude oil is transported to ports close to the main areas of consumption, where it is refined
into many products ranging from heavy fuel oil to complex chemicals. Some of these require
very specialized ships to carry them, and these will be discussed in a later lesson. Sufficient
here to note that ships smaller than those used for carrying crude oil are employed in the
transport of petroleum products. Many such products are very susceptible to contamination,
so the tanks in product carriers are designed to ensure that the product in one tank cannot
come into contact with the product in another.
Liquid Chemical Carriers

Crude oil is a very rich source of products beyond the most obvious ones such as fuel oil,
diesel oil, gasoline (petrol) and lubricants. Many chemicals are by-products of oil refining,

from things like solvents for use in many different industries to highly complex chemicals
which are ingredients for producing plastics. Some of these are transported in sufficiently
large quantities that it is economic to build small tankers exclusively for this traffic. This is a
highly specialised business, because some of these chemicals are highly susceptible to
contamination, so the ship's tanks have to be specially coated with a material which cannot be
dissolved by the chemical in question. Some chemical tankers even have stainless steel holds,
as no coating on ordinary steel would be immune to attack.
Where the normal quantities of chemicals are insufficient for it to be economical to build
dedicated tankers, use is made of parcel tankers. These ships have many tanks, each
completely separate from the others and each with its own pipe-line system so that
contamination of one product by another is impossible.
Oil and chemical by-products of the refining of oil are not the only liquids that are
transported in tankers. Materials such as liquid ammonia, certain acids, wine and even orange
juice move in bulk in this way.
Gas Carriers

Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) or methane is often found in conjunction with crude oil, whereas
Liquid Petroleum Gases (LPG) - propane and butane - are by-products of the crude oil
refining process. Both LNG and LPG can be forced, either by extreme cooling or by
compression, into a liquid state and are transported in specialised tankers.
Unlike the more conventional tanker types, the tanks of gas carriers do not form an integral
part of the ship's structure but are separate tanks contained within the hull of the ship.
LNG is, apart from a very few minor exceptions, always refrigerated and the tanks must be
highly insulated to prevent the cargo 'boiling' and returning to a gaseous state. LPG, on the
other hand, can be kept liquid by extreme pressure if in relatively small quantities and for
short voyages.