Scorpio Tankers Brand Guidelines: A 2009 Monaco Product-Tanker Owner and Its STI Ships

A family shipping group and a tanker company of its own.

Scorpio Tankers grew out of a family shipping group. English Wikipedia says the Italian businessman Glauco Lolli-Ghetti founded Scorpio Ship Management in New York in 1976 and soon moved it back to Europe, settling in Monaco; by 2003 the group was headed by his grandson, Emanuele A. Lauro. The company’s own biography of Lauro says he joined Scorpio in 2003 and that the group grew from an owner of three vessels that year to an operator and manager of more than 250 vessels in 2021.

The tanker business became a company in its own right in 2009. English Wikipedia dates the founding of Scorpio Tankers Inc. to 1 July 2009, with Lauro as founder, and says it was incorporated in the Marshall Islands, with its principal executive office in Monaco and a second office in New York. In April 2010 it completed an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange, where its shares trade under the ticker “STNG.” Lauro has been chairman and chief executive since that listing, the company says, and Robert Bugbee, who joined Scorpio in March 2009 after serving as president of the NYSE-listed tanker owner OMI Corporation, has been president since the same date.

The largest step came in 2017. In May that year, English Wikipedia says, Scorpio Tankers signed a merger with Navig8 Product Tankers that brought in 27 recently built long-range tankers, a deal Wikipedia says made it the largest product tanker company on a U.S. securities exchange. Lauro has also co-founded other companies alongside it: the company’s biography names Eneti, formed in 2013, which merged with Cadeler in December 2023.

LR2, MR and Handymax, all named STI.

Scorpio Tankers carries refined petroleum products rather than crude oil. The company describes its business as the marine transportation of petroleum products worldwide and sorts its fleet into three classes on its website: LR2 tankers, the largest of its product carriers; medium-range MR tankers; and smaller Handymax tankers. The website lists the main cargoes of the LR2s as diesel and naphtha, of the MRs as diesel and gasoline, and of the Handymaxes, which it says trade in the Baltic and North Sea, as diesel and fuel oil.

Its ships share a naming pattern: they carry the prefix STI, as in STI Pimlico, STI Spiga, STI Dama and STI Veneto. In June 2015 the STI Pimlico, a 2014-built tanker loaded with naphtha, collided with the cruise ship Celestyal Crystal in the Dardanelles strait in Turkey; gCaptain reported damage to both ships and that some of the tanker’s cargo was released.

Fuel rules have shaped the fleet. In October 2018, gCaptain reported, Scorpio Tankers and its sister company Scorpio Bulkers announced plans to fit exhaust-gas scrubbers to 146 vessels between them, with the tanker company planning systems on about 90 ships of its then 109-vessel fleet ahead of the International Maritime Organization’s 2020 sulphur limit. The company now says all of its vessels have ballast-water treatment systems and that 85% of its tonnage is fitted with scrubbers.

In July 2025 the LR2 STI Spiga became the pilot ship for a centrifugal onboard carbon-capture system made by Carbon Ridge, installed at the Besiktas shipyard in Turkey; gCaptain reported the project as a shipping-industry first, and quoted the company’s chief operating officer, Cameron Mackey, as saying Scorpio was proud to take part.

How tanker owners present themselves.

A tanker or dry-bulk owner sells a service rather than a product, so its identity has to live on its ships and in its paperwork. The oldest signs are the funnel mark and the house flag, painted or flown on every vessel the company operates; today the same hull in company livery is more often seen in an aerial photograph taken from a drone, the ship shown loaded and under way, filling the first screen of a corporate website.

Behind that picture sits the fleet list. Owners publish their ships by class and by name, from the very large crude carriers and Suezmax tankers of the crude trade to Capesize and smaller bulk carriers. Frontline’s home page, for example, counts its VLCCs, Suezmaxes and LR2/Aframax tankers, while CMB.TECH groups its ships under division names such as Euronav for oil tankers and Bocimar for dry bulk. Vessel names can run in a family too: Bocimar’s ships usually carry the prefix Mineral, English Wikipedia says.

Most owners also give space to crew welfare and safety, to environmental reporting and to the next generation of ships. Newbuilding and fuel announcements carry much of the story: CMB.TECH, for one, uses the slogan “Decarbonise Today, Navigate Tomorrow” and in 2026 presented a dry-bulk ship it describes as ammonia-powered, while Frontline’s 2026 fleet-renewal deal was framed around scrubber-fitted “ECO” newbuildings.

Because so many of these companies are listed in New York, Oslo or Brussels, the investor-relations section often does the heaviest lifting: quarterly results, presentations, dividend histories and charts of freight rates. This guide sets out what can be checked about each company — where it was founded, who controls it and what became of its name — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A smaller product fleet and a move into crude.

The fleet has been shrinking and changing shape. In November 2025 gCaptain counted 99 product tankers: 38 LR2s, 47 MRs and 14 Handymaxes. The company now lists 74: 25 LR2s, 35 MRs and 14 Handymaxes. gCaptain reported in October 2026 that its average operating fleet had fallen from 99 vessels in the third quarter of 2025 to about 75 a year later, and described Scorpio as one of the largest product tanker operators anywhere. On 29 September 2026 the company announced agreements to sell three more tankers, sales it expected to close before the end of 2026, and to buy four newbuildings.

The newer move is into crude. In the third quarter of 2024 Scorpio Tankers bought a 4.9% stake in the crude tanker owner DHT, gCaptain reported. By November 2025 it was selling those shares and had signed letters of intent for two VLCCs, very large crude carriers, at Hanwha Ocean in South Korea for delivery in the second half of 2028, which gCaptain described as its entry into the class. In September 2026 it agreed to buy two more VLCCs from Hengli Shipbuilding in Dalian, for delivery in 2028, along with two LR2s from Jiangsu Hantong for 2029. gCaptain also reported a minority interest in a joint venture developing eight further VLCC newbuildings, and a 3.4% stake in the crude tanker operator Volare Shipping, bought at its listing in October 2026.

The company’s chosen words are practical ones: its website speaks of a “modern, fuel-efficient fleet” and lists vessel counts, average ages and scrubber shares class by class, next to investor presentations and filings.

For a design guide, Scorpio Tankers shows how a shipowner’s identity can live in a ticker, a ship-name prefix and a fleet table sorted by class. Compare DHT, the crude tanker owner it once held a stake in, and Hafnia, another tanker owner in this series. For this guide we use navy, mist and an amber with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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