Worldscale
Worldscale ( WS ) is a uniform system for setting the freight rates for the freight of a specific oil tanker . Worldscale was developed in November 1952 by the London Tanker Brokers Panel at the request of British Petroleum and Royal Dutch Shell as the total average cost of moving oil from port to port by ship. As a result, a large table was created.
The same scale is still used today, although it was merged with the American Tanker Rate Schedule (ATRS) in 1969 . Until 2002 the table contained the average costs of 320,000 journeys with different combinations from one port of loading to one port of unloading as well as for five ports of loading and ten ports of unloading. Worldscale is sponsored by the Worldscale Association (NYC) Inc. for America and the Worldscale Association (London) Ltd. created for the rest of the world. The freight for a particular ship and voyage is normally expressed as a percentage of the published tariff and is intended to reflect the demand of the freight market at the time of the determination.
Some examples follow.
| From Yokohama to: | US $ / ton | Nautical miles |
|---|---|---|
| Adelaide | 10.60 | 10,574 |
| Aden | 12.39 | 13,038 |
| Chiba | 2.90 | 50 |
When negotiating a price to pay, the table above is referred to as WS100 or 100% by Worldscale. The actual price negotiated between the shipping company and charterer can range between 1% and 1000% and is referred to as WS1 to WS1000, depending on how much loss the former is willing to take on for this trip and how much the latter is willing to pay .