Excessive free water may occur in any grades loaded from any loading place. Credit to: Avigator Fortuner / Shutterstock.com Introduction This article is a follow-up to our article dated 8 March 2018 and it is a study of two recent cases. When crude oil is extracted from the reservoir it will inevitably contain a certain amount of water and suspended solids. In order to minimise the quantity that needs to be transported most water and sediments are separated out at the production site. As the product leaves the production site, the residual content of these unwanted impurities is measured as basic sediment and water (BS&W). Therefore, all unrefined crude oil has a percentage of water entrained within it, and during the voyage, separation naturally occurs with water collecting at the bottom of the tank beneath the oil, commonly known as free water (FW). Sales contracts for unrefined oil specify the BS&W and FW limit to ensure the cargo entering the process is within acceptable quality parameters. The relevant amounts are stated by the shippers in the quality documents issued after completion of loading. Occasionally these amounts are heavily understated, resulting in cargo claims at the discharge port. Due to the historic oil price deterioration triggered by global lock-down-measures, high value crude oil cargo claims were recently not frequent. However, understated free water levels as underlying mechanism, usually leading to those claims, was still observed. And given recent announcements of production cuts, a bullish sentiment will creep back into the oil market shortly. As oil price level and claims frequency are positively correlated, greater awareness is warranted. Two recent cases - what happened? Remarkably both occurred on the same route per VLCC, involving cargoes of five different grades all originating from Porto do Acu in Brazil to the Far East in February and March 2020. In the first case, 4827.42 bbls of free water were detected after loading of