The ‘Rolls-Royce’ of Tankers--as Long as Four Football Fields

MANAMA, Bahrain — A Kuwaiti supertanker, soon to sail into the Persian Gulf under the American flag and with a U.S. Navy escort, is so large that officers in the stern bridge need binoculars to inspect the bow.

The Al Rekkah, scheduled to sail into the gulf next week with the new name Bridgeton, is Kuwait’s largest tanker and thought to be the biggest in the Arab world--400 yards long and 77 yards wide.

Described as a tanker “Rolls-Royce,” the 401,382-ton vessel is fully automatic, requiring only 27 people to operate it. Those include a U.S. captain, with mainly European officers, and a Filipino crew.

One gulf-based shipping captain said a conventional Iranian attack on the ship--with rocket-propelled grenades, anti-tank missiles or machine guns--would be “like sticking pins into an elephant.”

Shipping sources say the Bridgeton, now anchored near the entrance to the gulf, will shuttle crude oil to an area outside the waterway for transfer to other tankers.

The vessel can carry nearly 3 million barrels of oil--about three days of Kuwait’s entire production and five or six days of Kuwaiti exports of crude oil.

The Japanese-built tanker is classed as an ultra-large crude carrier (ULCC), one of a range of more than 20 that one shipping source described as the “Rolls-Royces of ULCCs.”