Maritime Terms, Abbreviations and Acronyms

Foot or Feet

Full Terms

Free Trade Agreement or Freight Transport Association

Free Transferable Currency

Fitted

For their respective rights and interests

First thing tomorrow morning

A material used to produce heat or power by burning.

Mingling two or more materials, refinery streams ordinarily, to make a mixture that meets a grade of fuel's legal and commercial requirements. Refineries almost always sell finished products made from more than one component. Modern motor gasoline, for all practical purposes, must comprise several blendstocks. No single material can meet all its various specifications. Kerosene and gasoline do not require blending the way mogas does. But refinery economics and the number of processes which yield middle distillate fractions make combinations quite probable. Heavy fuel oil usually includes several streams in order to concoct a saleable material from the dregs of assorted units.

Oxygenates are compounds containing oxygen in a chain of carbon and hydrogen atoms. Today, oxygenates are blended into gasoline in two forms: alcohols or ethers. Ethanol is the most commonly used alcohol oxygenate; methyl-tertiary-butyl-ether, or MTBE, is the most commonly used ether oxygenate. Fuel oxygenates are used in gasoline to boost the octane rating and to decrease the toxic emissions in the exhaust.

An expression to describe a loaded vessel carrying cargoes of such a volume and weight that it fills all the vessel’s spaces and also brings her down to her tonnage loadline. A rare but optimum revenue condition for a vessel operator.

Ships equipped with permanent container cells, with little or no space for other types of cargo.

Crude oil washing in which the complete cargo tank is washed.

The amount of cargo a vessel carries or is able to carry. Practically, it is the amount of cargo which induces the specific voyage. While the cargo lot may take up the majority of the vessel’s space or ton- nage capacity, it does not require a vessel’s volume and weight capacity to be fully utilized.

see WHOLE NAPHTHA

The terms describing a fat or oil which has been hydrogenated to the extent that the resultant product is solid at room temperature. Products containing hydrogenated fats include heavy duty frying fats for restaurant use, solid shortenings and solid margarines.

The term used to describe an oil which has been subjected to extensive processing methods to remove - (1) free fatty acids and other gross impurities (refine); (2) naturally occurring colour bodies such as chlorophyll (bleach), and (3) volatile trace components which may affect colour, flavour and odour (deodorise).

Marketable product. Typically refers to petroleum products moved by pipeline. As long as a particular grade of gasoline meets Colonial pipeline specifications, for instance, it may travel and trade as fungible product. A fungible batch in the Colonial system consists of 25,000 barrels or more of material from various suppliers, all of which meets the specifications published by the Pipeline company.

A term ordinarily reserved for the kind of gasoil used for household heating. The quality of this product can vary from place to place. The USA, for instance, uses a lighter distillate for this purpose than do some European countries.

A type of contract established to pay today for something that will be delivered at a fixed future date.

Fishing vessel

Fresh water

Fresh water

Fresh water allowance

Fresh Water Arrival Draft

Fully loaded weight and capacity

Fresh Water Departure Draft

Finished With Engine

Federal Water Pollution Control Act

Forecastle (OCIMF acronym)

Fixed

Fixture

For Your Guidance

For your information

For Your Private Guidance

For Your Very Private Guidance

Grain (cargo capacity) or Gram

Grain capacity

Ghent/Hamburg (range)

Gibraltar - Hamburg range

General Average

Great Britain

Grain / bale capacity

denotes emissions in grams per tonne of cargo shipped over a kilometre

General Arrangement Plan

General agreement (plain)

General average contribution

General average deposit

General average/(arbitration)

Gallon

Bioactive cleaning agents used in galleys, crew quarters and passenger sections on cruise liners

Whereby the vessel lands a quantity of garbage for transfer to an approved garbage disposal location or facility ashore.

Garbling was the prohibited practice of mixing rubbish with the cargo. A distorted, mixed up message was said to be garbled.

A specialised tanker built to comply with Marpol 73/78 Annex 1 and the appropriate IMO Code for Vessels Carrying Liquefied Gases in bulk.

This refers to a steady state ‘gas free’ condition, meaning the atmosphere in the tank is “safe for man-entry”. The most common value taken for ‘gas free’ is that the atmosphere is below the LEL (Lower Explosive Limit) and that sufficient oxygen is present. Maximum allowable concentrations of any toxins must also be taken into account.

Facilities, which remove liquids from natural gas streams, bear this name. So do processing units in refineries which fractionate the light ends distilled from crude or produced by cracking and other upgrading equipment. In both cases, the plant separates C3 and heavier materials from fuel gas. Some of this hardware cuts as deep as C2. Complex refineries usually have two gas plants. One, the saturates gas plant, handles paraffinic, straight run light ends. The other, the unsaturated gases plant, takes care of olefinic gas streams which come from crackers.

An abbreviation for the percent mass of the hydrocarbon gases at normal temperature and pressure from C1 to C4 inclusive, present in crude oil.

Good And Safe (Port) Both ENDs

An intermediate distillate product used for diesel fuel, heating fuel and sometimes as feedstock.

A refined petroleum product denser than motor gasoline and kerosene but lighter than residual oil. This hydrocarbon mixture has two common uses: fuel for furnaces and for small diesel engines. It gets several popular names from these applications, including diesel and furnace oil. The phrase distillate fuel distinguishes gasoil from heavier mixtures used in large burners and large, slow diesel engines. The trade frequently shortens this term to distillate. ASTM's designation, No. 2 oil, serves as the primary name for gasoil in some parts of the world, especially North America. The refining industry employs "gasoil" To name certain intermediates in addition to familiar finished fuels. These special usages generally attach, or assume and adjective which indicates the source of the intermediate, such as atmospheric gasoil, vacuum gasoil, coker gasoil, pyrolysis gasoil, and so forth.

Also called gas or petrol, gasoline is a mixture of volatile, flammable liquid hydrocarbons derived from petroleum, with or without small quantities of additives, and used as motor fuel. It is also used as a solvent for oils and fats.

A component in motor gasoline blend added exclusively for volume. Ethanol, for example, often has this limited function in the USA.

Industry–related: A point at which freight moving from one territory to another is interchanged be- tween transportation lines.

General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade

Gross ballast bonus

Government Bill of Lading

Goods in bad order

Great circle

General cargo

Gencon

General cargo charter party

General Conditions

Geared

Good Day

GDynia/GDansk

Gross Domestic Product

General Department Store Merchandise: A classification of commodities that includes goods generally shipped by mass–merchandise companies. This commodity structure occurs only in service contracts.

Glycol Ether. Manufactured from either propylene oxide or ethylene oxide reacted with an alcohol. They are mainly used as solvents, plasticizers and brake fluids.

A general term for ropes, blocks, tackle and other equipment

Typically in the handysize to handymax size range although there are a small number of geared panamax vessels, like all bulkers they feature a series of holds covered by prominent hatch covers. They have cranes, derricks or conveyors that allow them to load or discharge cargo in ports without shore-based equipment. This gives geared bulkers flexibility in the cargoes they can carry and the routes they can travel.

Bulkers without cranes or conveyors. These ships depend on shore-based equipment at their ports of call for loading and discharging. They range across all sizes, the larger bulk carriers (VLOCs) can only dock at the largest ports, some of these are designed with a single port-to-port trade in mind. The use of gearless bulkers avoids the costs of installing, operating, and maintaining cranes.

General cargo charter party

Gencon'94 charter party

An extraordinary sacrifice intentionally and reasonably made to preserve from peril the property involved in a common maritime voyage.

Goods unpackaged or packaged, but not shipped in bulk

A barge without means of independent propulsion which carries break bulk cargoes, may be single or multi decked.

An self propelled barge with a single deck for the carriage of various types of dry cargo

Breakbulk freighters, car carriers, cattle carriers, pallet carriers and timber carriers. A vessel designed to carry heterogeneous mark and count cargoes.

A single or multi deck cargo vessel for the carriage of various types of dry cargo. Single deck vessels will typically have box shaped holds. Cargo is loaded and unloaded through weather deck hatches

A general cargo ship with the additional capability to be loaded and unloaded by ro-ro access to a limited portion of the cargo space

A vessel designed for the transportation of Break Bulk Cargoes, May Be Single Or Multi Decked. Not designed for operation in open sea.

A general cargo ship with accommodation for the carriage of more than 12 passengers

A vessel designed for the transportation of dry cargo and with capacity for carriage of passengers. Not designed for operation in open sea

A general cargo ship fitted with tanks for the additional carriage of liquid cargo

A general cargo ship with reversible hatch covers; one side is flush and the other is fitted with baffles for use with liquid cargoes. Containers can be carried on the hatch covers in dry cargo mode

Tanker ranging in size between 10,000-24,999 DWT

A portable generator which can be attached to a refrigerated container to power the refrigeration unit during transit.

Capable of causing injury to the genetic component of cells.

GENeralS or general cargo

General Sea Waybill