US tanker operator Penfield Marine, with help from Macquarie, claims to have completed its first carbon-neutral voyage via offsets to cover the carbon footprint of an entire voyage, including emissions associated with the vessel’s ballast leg, positioning the vessel to perform the voyage, the laden passage, and all in port load and discharge operations.

Penfield believes that this is the first carbon-neutral freight offering from a freight pool operator globally.

The voyage that Penfield has offset was performed by the Seaways Hatteras, a vessel owned by International Seaways. The vessel loaded 1m barrels of crude oil in Brazil for delivery to multiple ports in Southeast Asia, including Singapore and Malaysia, completing operations on June 24. The ballast leg from Singapore to Brazil was also offset.

The carbon offsets, identified, sourced, and retired by Macquarie, were from multiple Verra-registered projects.

“The completion of this first carbon neutral voyage has been an excellent collaboration with our founding suezmax pool member, International Seaways, and we see this as just the beginning. We look forward to continuing this effort on a platform basis with the pools that we operate,” commented Penfield’s CEO Tim Brennan.

Founded in 2012 by Brennan and Eric Haughn, Penfield Marine currently operates 64 tankers around the world in Penfield’s panamax/LR1 pool, aframax/LR2 pool, and suezmax pool.