Iran is seeking to secure a medium-sized tanker for dirty petroleum product storage, after confirming the booking of a suezmax tanker last week, shipbrokers said on Monday.
The state oil firm's shipping arm, the National Iranian Tanker Company (NITC) put an offer into the market on Monday for an 80,000-tonne tanker for storage purpose, barely a week after it had booked the 130,000-tonne Guru Gobind Singh for the storage and blending of crude oil.
It was still not immediately known what kind of dirty fuel product Iran would be storing on board the tanker.
"We haven't been told whether this is for fuel oil or crude, it is likely to be for crude," said a Singapore-based shipbroker.
NITC is seeking the tanker for prompt loading dates between end-May and early June, shipbrokers said.
The tanker is expected to be used for storage between 30-90 days, according to their inquiry.
The national shipping company has since end-April been using seven Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCCs) - a total of 14 million barrels capacity - for crude storage, up from four VLCC's or 8 million barrels in March, a company official had said.
Iran has been increasingly storing more of its Soroush and Nowruz crude grades, which it has been struggling to sell due to its poor quality.
Production levels of the two grades have been inconsistent from the start. The developer, Royal Dutch Shell had initially hoped to reach capacity by March 2004 but delayed that target by over a year due to technical problems.
The fields were shut down several times last year for unplanned maintenance. In March this year Iran said they should hit their 190,000-bpd output target by mid-May.
The heavy sour grades have a density of about 18-19 degrees API, which allows refiners only with sophisticated desulphurisers to process them.
Iran, the world's fourth-largest crude oil exporter, ships up to 2.4 million bpd and produces nearly 4.0 million bpd.