• Global market leader in the shuttle tanker industry
  • Providing critical, long-term infrastructure to the offshore oil supply chain in Brazil and the North Sea
  • Customers are oil majors and national oil companies (NOCs)

KNOT Offshore Partners LP is a limited partnership formed in February 2013 and incorporated under the laws of the Marshall Islands and listed on the New York Stock Exchange that owns and operates modern DP2 shuttle tankers. Shuttle tankers perform a critical infrastructure-like role in the offshore energy industry shuttling crude oil from offshore deepwater field installations to onshore refineries, storage facilities and onto other conventional crude oil transportation vessels by way of ship-to-ship transfer. The shuttle tanker is often described as a “floating pipeline”.

In conjunction with our Sponsor, Knutsen NYK Offshore Tankers (KNOT), we own and manage the world’s largest shuttle tanker fleet. Our vessels typically operate on period charters with National Oil Companies and Oil Majors on a fixed-rate basis. Our customers pay for fuel and so these charters are not typically impacted by changes in fuel price, or by volume of oil carried. Within the niche shuttle tanker sector, each vessel is built to order based on an initial long-term charter contract with a customer that underpins the initial years of operation.

Our Sponsor, KNOT, is also a market leading independent owner and operator of shuttle tankers, and together with KNOP forms the largest operator of shuttle tankers in the world today. KNOT is jointly owned by TS Shipping Invest AS (TSSI), and Nippon Yusen Kabushiki Kaisha (NYK). TSSI, controlled by our Chairman, is a private Norwegian company with ownership interests in shuttle tankers, liquefied natural gas (LNG) tankers and product/chemical tankers. NYK is a Japanese public company with a fleet of approximately 800 vessels, including bulk carriers, LNG vessels, containerships, tankers and specialized vessels. KNOT, through both direct investment and ownership of the general partner, retains at least 25% of the limited partner interest in KNOP.