Very Large Crude Oil (VLCC) Tanker

Description

Very large crude oil tanker custom built model ship

Very large crude oil tankers (commonly referred to as VLCC’s or supertankers) are the largest types of oil tankers and are used for the transport of oil barrels. These tankers have a capacity of 250,000 DWT and can carry up to 2,000,000 barrels of oil or 318,000 metric tons of oil.

VLCC’s are well known for being some of the largest ships ever built, especially during the 1970’s when they were first seen. One good way to measure the sheer capacity of these ships is by comparing the amount of daily oil usage to the amount of oil each ship can carry. In 2009, the UK consumed an average of 1.6 million barrels of oil per day. The VLCC’s could carry up to 2 million barrels of oil.

By 2014, a very few number of VLCC’s remain in operation, and of those none of them are over 400 metres long. Despite this, VLCC’s are still enormous in size, and cannot physically enter port when fully loaded. For this reason, their cargo is often loaded at off shore platforms and then offloaded on to smaller tankers which can more easily unload at port. Due to the nature of their purpose, VLCC’s have fairly long routes and usually spend around 70 days at sea.

This is a custom built ship model of a VLCC tanker. As we had never built a model of this type before, we had to obtain the plans for the ship before we started building. Secondly, due to the sheer size of the model, it meant we had to enforce a strong attention to detail in order to ensure that every single feature of the ship was accurate and realistic. The model was handcrafted by model makers with vast experience and artisan painters to ensure it was of the highest quality. You can view more of our custom model range by clicking here.