In a time charter arrangement, the charterer pays for fuel consumed during the voyage, but the master and owner control the route. This creates a structural conflict of interest: the owner has no financial incentive to minimize fuel consumption on the charterer's behalf, and the charterer historically has had no independent means to verify whether the route chosen was optimal.
VesselFront's Charterer Mode addresses this by providing independent, counterfactual route analysis: given the vessel, the ports, the departure time, and the prevailing weather, what was the theoretically optimal route? How did the actual route compare? What was the fuel premium of any deviation?
This paper outlines the counterfactual methodology, the data sources used (historical weather, actual AIS track, vessel performance curves), and the statistical framework for quantifying under-performance. We also address the legal context: how counterfactual analysis is treated in London arbitration, P&I club guidelines, and BIMCO charter party clauses.
Three anonymized case studies illustrate the methodology: a Panamax bulk carrier voyage where the master added 2.3% to the route without weather justification; a tanker voyage where a sub-optimal speed profile added 4.1% to fuel consumption; and a successful defense using VesselFront analysis to demonstrate that a disputed deviation was weather-justified.