A tanker pool combines similar vessels from several owners under one commercial manager and shares the earnings. Each vessel's share is set by its pool points, a measure of relative earning power. Vetting status feeds that share directly: published pool agreements deduct points, and eventually the vessel itself, when oil major approvals lapse.
What is a tanker pool and how do pool points work?
A pool is a fleet of similar vessels, contributed by different owners, marketed and operated commercially as one. Hafnia describes it as vessels "brought together by their owners to exploit efficiencies, economies of scale and benefit from a revenue/loss-sharing mechanism". Tankers International, which formed the first VLCC pool in 2000 and reached a peak of 69 VLCCs in 2023, calls itself an outsourced chartering department: the pool fixes the cargoes, collects the freight, and pays each owner a share.
Pool points are the sharing key. The pool aggregates net earnings across all vessels for a period, then distributes them in proportion to each vessel's points multiplied by the days it was available to earn, adjusted for off-hire. A vessel with more points earns a larger slice of the same pot; a vessel off-hire earns nothing for those days. Settlements are frequent by shipping standards: Tankers International distributes typically twice monthly, and Hafnia settles its pools bi-weekly.
The practical effect is that a pooled owner's revenue question shifts. It is no longer "what did my ship fix?" but "how many points does my ship hold, and how many days did it earn them?"
How is a vessel's pool point allocation set?
Points are set by benchmarking each vessel's theoretical earning power against the rest of the fleet. Tankers International states that a vessel's share of pool income "is determined by its theoretical earnings potential relative to the rest of the fleet". Hafnia's system compares "voyage results on hypothetical benchmark routes", weighted by size, fuel consumption, classification and other capabilities. A Grindrod Shipping filing on the Maersk-operated Handy Tanker Pool lists the same family of inputs: cargo carrying capacity, IMO class, age, engine load settings and operational flexibility, such as the ability to enter particular ports or transit canals.
Allocations are not set once and forgotten. Tankers International adjusts points every six months for changes in trading patterns, fleet composition, market level and bunker prices. The published Navig8 VL8 pool agreement recalculates points annually, approved by the pool committee each January, and reviews performance against the vessel's actual speed and consumption data. A ship that burns more fuel than its declared curve loses points at the next review; the benchmarking is designed to keep the sharing honest.
How does vetting status change a vessel's earnings in a pool?
In at least one published pool agreement, vetting status is written straight into the points. The VL8 pool agreement (a VLCC pool agreement from 2013, filed publicly with the US SEC) contains a clause headed "SIRE and oil major approvals". If a vessel ceases to have at least one positive hydrocarbon-discharge-port SIRE report not more than six months old from one of six named oil majors (BP, Total, Shell, ChevronTexaco, Statoil and ExxonMobil, as the companies were then named), or is not approved by three or more of them, the pool manager may deduct 15 pool earning points with immediate effect.
Note what triggers the deduction: not a casualty, not a detention, but a stale inspection report. The clause treats a missing recent SIRE report the same way it treats lost approvals, because to a charterer they look the same. Fixture screening runs on current evidence, and how that screening works from questionnaire to fixture explains why a report older than six months often may as well not exist. Charterparties make the same demand from the other side: the Grindrod filing records charter agreements requiring "a valid SIRE report (less than six months old)" and vetting approval of both vessel and technical manager.
So a pooled tanker's earnings sit on two clocks at once. The market sets the size of the pot. Vetting recency helps set the vessel's share of it.
What happens when a vessel loses an oil major approval?
First the vessel's employment narrows, then its pool position does. The VL8 agreement defines "not approved" broadly: rejected or not accepted "for a prospective voyage charter or other vessel employment". Every cargo from that major is off the table until the position is restored, and because oil majors screen per voyage rather than issuing standing approvals, there is no grace period built into the market itself.
The pool agreement then adds a deadline. Under the VL8 terms, if a vessel remains unapproved for more than 45 days, the pool manager may terminate the vessel's participation on 20 days' written notice. The commercial logic is unsentimental: the pool exists to secure the highest earnings per vessel, and a ship that major charterers will not take drags the average for everyone.
Recovering the position usually means a fresh inspection and a clean file behind it. For crude and product tankers that is a SIRE 2.0 inspection against the vessel's compiled questionnaire, and the preparation is a subject of its own, covered in preparing for the CVIQ. The wider pre-vetting routine, running the inspector's checks before the inspector does, is covered in how to prepare for charterer vetting.
Why do pools hold every vessel to the same vetting standard?
Because the pool sells interchangeability. A charterer fixing with the pool expects any nominated vessel to clear its screening; one ship that cannot narrows the pool's options on every cargo it quotes, not just its own. Revenue sharing sharpens the point. When earnings are pooled, one vessel's rejection dilutes every participant's distribution, which is why entry standards are policed at the door: Tankers International says it welcomes participants "with top-quality ships" who meet the management standards it expects, and the VL8 agreement backs the expectation with the point deductions and termination rights described above.
The result is that a pool is one of the few places where vetting performance has a published, mechanical price. Elsewhere the cost of a failed vet is an invisible counterfactual, the fixture that went to another ship. In a pool it is a line in the agreement: 15 points now, the berth itself after 45 days. Where vetting sits among the other regimes a vessel answers to, class, flag and Port State Control, is mapped in vetting vs class vs flag vs PSC.