How Many Barrels Does a VLCC Hold? Tanker Sizes in Barrels

A very large crude carrier (VLCC) holds about 2 million barrels of crude oil. The EIA gives 1.9 million to 2.2 million barrels, and a 300,000-tonne ship loading 40-degree API crude, at 7.63 barrels to the tonne, takes about 2.06 million. A Suezmax carries roughly 1 million barrels and an Aframax roughly half a million.

Nobody sells a tanker by the barrel. Ships are sized by deadweight tonnes, a weight, and the barrels aboard depend on how dense the oil is. The same 270,000 tonnes of cargo is 1.82 million barrels of 20-degree heavy crude and 2.18 million barrels of 50-degree condensate, a swing of 360,000 barrels, which is more than the entire gasoline cargo of an MR products tanker on the EIA’s figures (up to 345,000 barrels). That is why every published “barrels per tanker” number is a rounded nameplate for a class.

Why a 300,000-tonne ship is not a 300,000-barrel ship

Deadweight tonnage is the EIA’s measure of “a ship’s capacity to carry cargo” by weight. For a tanker the cargo is most of it, but not all: the ship also has to carry its own fuel, fresh water, stores and crew. The EIA’s 2014 explainer on the tanker classes handles this with a convention. It estimates capacity “using an estimated 90% of a ship’s deadweight tonnage” and multiplies by a barrels-per-tonne factor “specific to each type of petroleum product and crude oil.” Both steps are approximations, and they are the ones used below.

For a 300,000 deadweight tonne VLCC, the same size the Port of Corpus Christi uses for the ships its Ingleside docks are designed to handle, the chain runs as follows. Cargo is 300,000 × 0.90 = 270,000 tonnes. At 40 degrees API the oil has a specific gravity of 0.8251 and a density of 824.3 kilograms per cubic metre, so 270,000 tonnes fills 327,566 cubic metres. A US barrel is 42 gallons, which NIST puts at 0.1589873 cubic metres, so that volume is 2,060,329 barrels. Rounded, 2.06 million.

Run the same chain for the other end of the EIA’s quote. The EIA says a VLCC carries 1.9 million to 2.2 million barrels of WTI-type crude. Working backwards at 40 degrees API and the 90% rule, 1.9 million barrels is a ship of about 277,000 deadweight tonnes and 2.2 million is about 320,000. So the EIA’s range describes the upper end of the VLCC class, not the whole of it. The AFRA band that the EIA draws for VLCCs starts at 160,000 tonnes, where the same arithmetic gives only 1.10 million barrels.

From API gravity to barrels per tonne

The EIA defines degrees API as 141.5 divided by the specific gravity at 60 degrees F, minus 131.5. Rearranged, specific gravity is 141.5 ÷ (API + 131.5). Multiplying by the density of water at 60 F, 999.016 kilograms per cubic metre, gives the oil’s density. One tonne is 1,000 kilograms, so the volume of a tonne is 1,000 ÷ density in cubic metres, and dividing by 0.1589873 cubic metres per barrel turns that into barrels. Table 1 applies the chain to the gravities that matter in the tanker trade. Our guide to API gravity and sulfur covers what the number says about the crude itself; here it is only a density.

The hand check for 40 degrees: 141.5 ÷ 171.5 = 0.8251; × 999.016 = 824.3 kg per cubic metre; 1,000 ÷ 824.3 = 1.2132 cubic metres; ÷ 0.1589873 = 7.631 barrels. The 10-degree row is a useful sanity test because it is almost water: a tonne of 60 F fresh water is 1,000 ÷ 999.016 ÷ 0.1589873 = 6.30 barrels, and the table’s 10-degree crude lands on that value.

From 20 to 50 degrees, the barrels packed into a tonne rise by 20%, from 6.74 to 8.08. Because tankers fill by weight, that 20% is also the gap in what a full ship carries, and in what the cargo is worth if the two crudes sold for the same price per barrel. They do not: heavy sour oil trades at a discount, and the sibling guide on the WCS and WTI differential shows how large that discount can get.

The AFRA classes, converted to barrels

The class names that appear in freight reports come from the Average Freight Rate Assessment (AFRA), a scale the EIA says Royal Dutch Shell established about six decades before its 2014 note and that the London Tanker Brokers’ Panel oversees. The EIA’s chart of the scale gives the bands in thousands of deadweight tonnes. Table 2 puts the bands beside two things: a conversion of each crude-carrying band at 40 degrees API and the 90% rule, and the capacity the EIA itself quotes. Aframax is missing from the table body because the EIA marks it as not an official AFRA class, shown “for comparison”; it is covered after the table.

Three rows test the EIA’s method. For the LR1 class, 45,000 to 80,000 tonnes at 90% and 7.631 barrels per tonne comes to 309,000 to 549,000 barrels; the EIA quotes 310,000 to 550,000 barrels of light sweet crude for the class. The method reproduces the quote to within a thousand barrels, which suggests the EIA used a conversion close to 40 degrees API for light crude. For the ULCC class the same arithmetic gives 2.20 million to 3.78 million barrels against the EIA’s 2 million to 3.7 million, a fair match at the top and a loose one at the bottom. For the VLCC class the arithmetic gives 1.10 million to 2.20 million, and the EIA’s 1.9 million to 2.2 million matches only the upper part. The text does not say why. The simplest reading is that the quoted range describes the VLCCs actually trading, which sit near the top of the band, rather than the band’s mathematical floor.

Two of the classes in the chart overlap, and that is a feature of how the trade uses them. LR2 runs from 80,000 to 160,000 tonnes, so it contains the whole Aframax range and reaches the 160,000 tonnes the Port of Corpus Christi gives for a Suezmax. The EIA’s text puts Aframax, 80,000 to 120,000 tonnes, between LR1 and LR2 and notes that the brokers’ panel publishes no separate freight assessment for it, even though “many ships have been built within these specifications.” At 90% and 40 degrees API the Aframax band is 549,000 to 824,000 barrels. The EIA’s 2018 note on Gulf Coast ports calls the class “approximately 500,000 barrels,” which, run backwards, is a ship of about 73,000 deadweight tonnes, below the 80,000 floor. The 500,000 is a round number for the class, not a measurement of its midpoint, and readers using it for a cargo estimate will understate a full-size Aframax by 9% to 39%.

Handysize is the other name readers search that the chart omits. It does not appear on the EIA’s AFRA scale, whose smallest classes are General Purpose (10,000 to 25,000 tonnes) and Medium Range (25,000 to 45,000), so no barrel figure is given for it; the chart shows only that the small product carriers sit in those two rows.

Suezmax, Panamax and the names that come from places

Suezmax and Panamax are not AFRA classes. They are named for the waterway that limits them, and each waterway’s authority defines the limit differently, which is why no official page gives a single deadweight band for either. The Panama Canal Authority’s Notice to Shipping N-1-2026 defines a Panamax vessel by dimensions: 294.13 metres long (the notice’s definition of the vessel; the 289.6 metre figure in Table 4 is its normal limit for commercial transit), 32.31 metres in beam and a 39.50 foot tropical fresh-water draft, and it states no deadweight tonnage anywhere in its vessel requirements. The Suez Canal Authority gives its limit as a draft and a maximum loaded deadweight, covered in the next section. The EIA, in a January 27, 2026 analysis of tanker rates, describes Suezmax vessels as carrying “around 1 million barrels” and being “the largest vessels that can transit the Suez Canal,” which describes the class by its role.

The VLCC has two official definitions that disagree. The AFRA scale starts the class at 160,000 deadweight tonnes. The International Maritime Organization’s Resolution A.375(X), adopted on November 14, 1977, for navigation through the Straits of Malacca and Singapore, says that “a tanker of 150,000 dwt and above shall be deemed to be a Very Large Crude Carrier.” A 150,000-tonne ship is a VLCC for the Malacca rules and an LR2 for freight assessment. Table 3 sets the capacity claims that various official pages make for the same classes, with the barrels per deadweight tonne they imply where a source gives both.

The Corpus Christi figures sit on either side of the EIA’s 90% rule. A 300,000-tonne VLCC with 2,000,000 barrels is 6.67 barrels per deadweight tonne, below the rule’s 6.87 at 40 degrees. A 160,000-tonne Suezmax with 1,200,000 barrels is 7.50, well above it: 1,200,000 barrels of 40-degree crude weighs about 157,000 tonnes, 98% of the ship’s deadweight, where the VLCC example works out to 87%. A 98% loading leaves almost nothing for the ship’s own fuel and stores, so the Suezmax figure is the loose one. Every one of these numbers is a nameplate for a class, not a bill of lading.

What each waterway lets through

A tanker’s size in barrels matters less to a charterer than the question of where it can float when full. Table 4 gathers the limits that official sources publish, each in the units and wording of its own authority. Some are ship drafts and some are channel depths, which are different things: a ship needs clearance beneath its keel, so a channel must be deeper than the draft of the ships it takes.

Suez: a depth that became a tonnage

The Suez Canal Authority’s own stages table pairs each deepening with the largest loaded ship it allowed, which turns draft into deadweight tonnes without any help from a shipbroker. In 1962 the canal’s 38 foot draft took loaded ships of 60,000 deadweight tonnes. By 1980 a 53 foot draft took 150,000, and in 1996 a 58 foot draft took 185,000. The January 2010 stage set the permissible draft at 66 feet, which the table pairs with 240,000 deadweight tonnes, and the 2015 column of the table repeats those figures. The Authority’s New Suez Canal page describes the 2015 works as a 35 km parallel channel dug to 24 metres so that vessels of up to 66 feet draught could use it. At the EIA’s 90% rule and 40 degrees API, 240,000 deadweight tonnes is 1.65 million barrels, which is why a fully loaded Suezmax passes and a fully loaded VLCC does not.

Two cautions apply to the Suez row. The page carrying the table has a 2017 footer, and it labels a 72 foot stage as “Target stage, Under Study,” so the 66 foot figure is the one the Authority currently states, not one it has confirmed is final. The Authority’s navigation circulars page lists 2026 circulars on transit dues, pilotage, passenger ships and an amendment to the rules of navigation but, on the first page read, none that changes the permissible draft; a charterer should still confirm the draft in force with the Authority before fixing a laden transit. And the 61.2% figure is a share of the fleet that can pass fully loaded, which leaves the other 38.8% needing a lighter load or a ballast passage.

Panama: dimensions, not tonnage

The Panama Canal’s published limits are all dimensions. For the older locks the notice sets a normal maximum length of 289.6 metres (950 feet) for commercial vessels, a beam of 32.31 metres and a draft of 12.04 metres, which it expresses as 39 feet 6 inches in tropical fresh water at a Gatun Lake level of 24.01 metres or higher. For the Neopanamax locks the length is 370.33 metres, the beam 51.25 metres and the draft 15.24 metres (50 feet) at a lake level of 25.91 metres. The notice states the 15.24 metre draft is at a lake level “of 25.91 meters (85.0 feet) or higher,” so the limit is conditional on water in the lake, and the canal publishes it as a condition and not as a fixed number.

“Tropical fresh water” matters for a tanker because fresh water is less dense than the sea, so a hull sits deeper in it. The notice gives the lake’s density as 0.9954 grams per cubic centimetre at 29.4 C. A loaded ship at the 12.04 metre limit in Gatun Lake would float at a slightly smaller draft in sea water, so the limit is a fresh-water measure and should not be compared directly with a sea-water draft read at the sea buoy. The notice gives no tanker tonnage, so no barrel count is assigned to the Panamax or Neopanamax locks. As a rough orientation only, the Suez table above lists 60,000 deadweight tonnes at 38 feet, close to the Panamax-lock draft of 39.5 feet, but hull forms differ, and a dimension check against the notice is the only safe test for a specific ship.

Malacca: a clearance rule, not a draft

The Straits of Malacca and Singapore have no maximum draft in the IMO text. The IMO resolution instead requires deep draught vessels (15 metres or more) and VLCCs (150,000 tonnes or more) to allow an under-keel clearance of at least 3.5 metres at all times through the straits. The allowed draft is therefore, in effect, the charted depth at the shallowest point on the route minus 3.5 metres, which makes the limit a function of the tide and survey, not a ship dimension. The resolution advises such ships to keep their speed over the ground to no more than 12 knots. No depth is given for the shallowest point because no official page checked states one, and no official page defines the term “Malaccamax.”

The US Gulf Coast: the reason cargoes are split

The EIA’s 2018 analysis explains the structure: Gulf Coast onshore ports sit in inland harbours behind dredged channels, so a VLCC that wants a full cargo loads part of it at the dock and the rest by ship-to-ship transfer offshore, a process the EIA calls reverse lightering. The only US facility the article named as able to take a fully loaded VLCC was LOOP, offshore Louisiana, and it said trade press and company announcements pointed to Corpus Christi as the likeliest site for the next one. That list has since changed on paper: on February 3, 2026 the US Department of Transportation announced that Texas GulfLink, LLC had received a licence to build and operate a deepwater port for crude oil exports, to export up to 1 million barrels a day and enhance the country’s ability to accommodate VLCCs. The announcement gives no date for service, and none of the sources checked says the port is operating, so a licence is not evidence yet of a fully loaded VLCC leaving the Texas coast. The Maritime Administration’s licensing page, last updated June 27, 2025, also lists the SPOT terminal among licensed ports in the construction phase. Eight years after the EIA article, the Port of Corpus Christi describes a 54-foot channel on its About page, though a footnote on its Liquid Bulk page still says the final dredging phase was “expected to conclude in 2025,” so the port’s own pages are not in step. Its public oil docks, on its figures, take Suezmax-size tankers of 160,000 tonnes, and its private Ingleside docks have berths “designed to handle” VLCC-size ships. A berth designed for a VLCC is not a statement that the ship leaves full, and none of the sources checked says how deep the water is at those berths.

Houston is mid-project. Port Houston’s Project 11 is widening the Galveston Bay reach from 530 to 700 feet and deepening upstream segments, where the existing depths are 41 feet (Boggy Bayou to Hunting Bayou) and 37 feet (Sims Bayou to IH 610), to 46.5 and 41.5 feet. Port Houston celebrated the completion of its own segments on October 8, 2026, but the overall project is scheduled to finish in 2029, so those upstream depths are targets, not today’s limits. The page read does not give the main channel’s present depth, and no figure is supplied here.

What one VLCC cargo is worth

A barrel count becomes a dollar figure with a price, and the benchmark prices in October 2026 were far apart. The EIA’s spot series for Tuesday, October 27, the latest in its October 28 release, give Europe Brent at $123.10 and Cushing WTI at $103.37, a gap of $19.73. Table 5 multiplies each cargo size by each price. The multiplication for the 2 million barrel row is 2,000,000 × 123.10 = $246,200,000 at Brent and 2,000,000 × 103.37 = $206,740,000 at WTI.

Each dollar on the barrel price moves a 2 million barrel cargo by $2 million. The Brent and WTI figures differ by $19.73 a barrel, so the same ship’s cargo is worth $39.5 million more at the Brent price than at the WTI price, which is a ceiling on what an exporter can spend moving a Gulf Coast barrel to a Brent-priced market before the trade stops paying. It is not the profit: freight, insurance, port charges, financing and the quality differential between the crude loaded and the benchmark all come out of it, and the sibling guide to the WTI and Brent spread sets out what the gap does and does not measure. Brent here is the EIA’s FOB spot series for North Sea crude and WTI is a Cushing, Oklahoma, price for crude inland; neither is the price at a Gulf Coast dock.

One older number deserves a warning. The EIA’s 2014 tanker explainer said that with WTI near $92 a barrel a fully loaded VLCC “could carry about $100 million dollars’ worth of crude oil.” That does not follow from the explainer’s own capacity of 1.9 million to 2.2 million barrels: at $92 those barrels are $175 million to $202 million. The note appears to be low by roughly half, and any figure built on it inherits the error.

US crude exports, counted in VLCC loadings

The EIA’s series for US crude oil exports gives a cross-check on the size of one cargo. In 2025 the United States exported an annual average of 3,961 thousand barrels a day. Taken as a stream of VLCC-size loadings of 2 million barrels, that is 1.98 a day, or 723 a year: 1,446 million barrels divided by 2 million. On the EIA’s 1.9 million to 2.2 million range for a VLCC, the figure is 1.80 to 2.08 a day.

By this measure August 2026 matched the 2025 average, at 2.00 VLCC cargoes a day, and the spring of 2026 was the exception. April ran at 2.80 and May at 2.86 cargoes a day, 5.59 million and 5.73 million barrels, before June fell back to 2.37 and July to 1.78. The chart below shows the full run of monthly values.

The VLCC count is a unit of measure, not a shipping count, and the sources show why. The EIA’s 2018 note says the Gulf Coast’s onshore ports mostly handle Aframax-size ships of around 500,000 barrels and a limited number take Suezmax, so four Aframaxes or two Suezmaxes are needed for what one VLCC carries. The Port of Corpus Christi’s public docks are described in Suezmax terms. If every barrel left in a Suezmax of 1 million barrels, the 2025 average would be 3.96 sailings a day, and if every barrel left in an Aframax it would be 7.92. The real figure sits between the two and above the VLCC count, because a part-loaded VLCC lifts less than 2 million barrels and some cargoes go on smaller ships to nearby markets. Our guide to US crude exports follows the destinations and the weekly series, and its section on ships and docks puts the same point in words.

The comparison with the Strait of Hormuz is tempting and needs a label. The EIA’s Today in Energy of June 16, 2025 puts total oil flow through the strait at 20 million barrels a day in 2024, which is 10 VLCC-sized cargoes a day if every barrel were crude on a 2 million barrel ship. It is not: the figure includes petroleum products, which move on smaller ships, so the real count of vessels is higher and the VLCC-equivalent is a measure of volume only. On that basis the US 2025 export average of 3.961 million barrels a day is about a fifth of the strait’s 2024 flow. The Strait of Hormuz flows guide gives the crude and product split and the 2026 estimates that this comparison leaves out.

Checking a tanker headline against the class table

News about a fixture usually names a class and a tonnage, rarely a barrel count. Multiply the deadweight by the factor in the callout above for the crude on board. A 115,000 tonne Aframax loading 40-degree API crude takes about 790,000 barrels, and the same ship loading a 25-degree crude takes about 721,000. A 160,000 tonne Suezmax takes about 1,099,000 barrels of the lighter crude against Port of Corpus Christi’s quoted 1,200,000. A 300,000 tonne VLCC takes 2,060,000, and the same ship carrying a 20-degree crude takes 1,820,000.

Three habits keep the number reliable. First, ask whether the tonnage is deadweight, which is a weight limit of the ship, or something else, since gross tonnage and the Panama Canal’s measurement system measure volume and have nothing to do with a cargo in tonnes. Second, keep the class definitions in mind: a ship called VLCC by the IMO rules (150,000 tonnes and above) may be an LR2 by the AFRA scale. Third, treat a barrel count that sits right on a round number, 500,000, 1 million or 2 million, as the class’s nameplate. The Suezmax figure alone runs from 900,000 to 1,200,000 barrels across the sources in Table 3, a third higher at the top, and an exact barrel count comes only from the bill of lading, which no public source publishes.

A last use of the numbers is freight context. The EIA’s January 27, 2026 analysis of tanker rates found VLCC rates from the Persian Gulf to Asia fell 43% between November 2025 and January 2026, after reaching their highest since summer 2020, and that Suezmax rates from the US Gulf Coast to Europe rose 107% from November 2024 to November 2025. The EIA ties the rise partly to the shift of Russian crude trade and partly to long hauls, and says shippers turn to Suezmaxes when VLCCs are tied up on long routes. Ship size, in other words, is also a pricing variable, and the topic hub on oil trade routes collects the guides on where those ships go. For what a barrel is as a unit, the barrel of oil guide covers the 42 gallons behind every figure above.

Data and sources, all checked November 3, 2026: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Oil tanker sizes range from general purpose to ultra-large crude carriers on AFRA scale (September 16, 2014); U.S. Gulf Coast port limitations impose additional costs on rising U.S. crude oil exports (May 16, 2018); Crude oil tanker rates reached multi-year highs in late 2025; Amid regional conflict, the Strait of Hormuz remains critical oil chokepoint (June 16, 2025); World Oil Transit Chokepoints; Table Definitions for Qualities of Crude Oil Input (API gravity); EIA U.S. exports of crude oil, monthly, annual and weekly; Europe Brent spot price FOB and Cushing WTI spot price FOB. Suez Canal Authority, Canal Characteristics and Navigation Circulars. Panama Canal Authority, OP Notice to Shipping N-1-2026, Vessel Requirements (January 1, 2026). International Maritime Organization, Resolution A.375(X), Navigation through the Straits of Malacca and Singapore (1977). US Department of Transportation, Texas GulfLink deepwater port licence announcement (February 3, 2026), and Maritime Administration, Deepwater Ports and Licensing (last updated June 27, 2025). Port of Corpus Christi Authority, Liquid Bulk, Liquid Docks and About Us. Port Houston, Project 11 overview, segment map and press release of October 9, 2026. NIST, Special Publication 811, Appendix B.8 (conversion factors). Conversions, class barrel ranges, cargo values and VLCC-equivalents are derived here from the published inputs.