Barclays Capital has chartered a very large crude carrier to store Asian low-sulfur gasoil off European shores, bringing the number of supertankers known to be storing gasoil around the world to five, according to two people with firsthand knowledge of the transaction.

The VLCC has been loaded with low-sulfur gasoil from Taiwan's Formosa Petrochemical Corp. (6505.TW), the people said. VLCCs can typically hold as much as 260,000 metric tons of oil products.

A Barclays Capital spokesman in London declined comment.

The vessel is most likely a newly built ship with no cargo history and clean tanks, a European shipbroker said, adding that the vessel will likely travel to Europe for storage off European shores.

VLCCs typically carry crude oil and don't store clean products such as gasoil because the tanks have to be cleaned first - a time-consuming and expensive process.

However, shipowners are charging lower freight rates to place oil products in floating storage as weak demand for crude makes it difficult to find jobs for newly built supertankers.

Vitol Holding BV, JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), Gunvor International BV and Trafigura Group have chartered VLCCs to store gasoil off European and Middle Eastern shores in the past month as the premium of forward-month contracts to prompt prices of ICE gasoil futures makes holding on to stocks worthwhile.

Barclays Capital is a unit of Barclays PLC (BARC.LN).

By Wayne Ma, Dow Jones Newswires; +65 6415 4065; wayne.ma@dowjones.com