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Gulf oil loadings smooth as US troops advance

And shippers said the only real impact of the war so far had been to firm up hull war-risk charges. But even then, rises were much smaller than in the 1991 Gulf War and were confined to port calls in the northern-most reaches of the Gulf.

According to leading marine insurers contacted by Reuters on Thursday, insurance rates for voyages to major Gulf oil producer Kuwait had risen around five-fold to 0.5 per cent of hull value, compared to as much as five per cent during the Gulf War.

"Things seem to be very normal, there is nothing disrupting loadings so far. No dramas," said Kevin Rose director of London-based E.A Gibson tanker brokers based in London.

"There's nothing unusual happening bar a delay to an Island Navigation-owned tanker in Kuwait, but otherwise it's calm as far as we can tell," said Ola Lorentzon, managing director of the world's largest oil tanker firm Norway's Frontline.

Lorentzon and at least one other major tanker owner said they had no scheduled loadings from Kuwaiti ports soon. "But it's not a deliberate choice," he said.

Shipping brokers said freight rates for tankers carrying crude from the Gulf were falling, though they said it was difficult to attribute the drop directly to the conflict.

"What's clear is that we've seen about half of the volume (of last week) shipped this week," one said. Kuwaiti oil executives told Reuters on Friday that key production and export facilities were operating normally after two missiles landed in southern waters close to loading facilities.

A shipping official said that loading facilities escaped unscathed. He said one missile landed in waters just off an offshore oil loading terminal. An hour later, another landed just off a coastal strip where Kuwait's three refineries are located.

Shipping brokers said the loading supertanker, 255,270-tonne Island Accord, owned by Hong Kong-based Island Navigation, had been delayed by a few hours because of the attack.

Brokers said another supertanker, chartered by a Japanese company, was due to load 1.9 million barrels of crude from the Mina al Ahmadi terminal today.

Kuwait said it would cut throughput at its refineries slightly in a precautionary move following the missile attacks.

It said exports of crude and oil products would not be reduced due to the lower throughput rates at the Mina Al Ahmadi, Shuaiba and Mina Abdullah facilities. Maritime industry sources played down fears that Japanese tanker crews might refuse to man tankers and other vessels travelling up to the northern-reaches of the Gulf.

"There's no evidence of that yet - its probably based on what happened, in part, during the last Gulf War. But it's not been declared (by them)," said E.A Gibson's Rose. During the 1991 Gulf War strongly-unionised Japanese seafarers refused to man tankers and vessels steaming into Gulf waters. Japan's largest oil refiner, Nippon Oil Corp said it was already using foreign-flagged tankers to lift Kuwaiti crude.