Managing modern merchant vessels is quite challenging task for shipboard personnel, as well as for shore-based managers in shipping companies. The risks are more so accentuated in terms of vessels that carry dangerous and volatile cargoes, such as tanker vessels. Modern industrial disasters have demonstrated that organizations have a considerable role to play in terms of ensuring adequate safety climate in day-to-day operations at the sharp end. This study explores Critical Success Factors (CSFs) that are necessary for tanker vessel managers to ensure that the ships operate as safe as possible. A literature review focused on the shipping industry and tanker vessels in specific, revealed CSFs such as – human factors, technical factors, environmental factors, organizational factors, regulatory factors, and economic factors, as well several sub factors. The results can provide a basis for further systematic analyses of the CSFs and how they are perceived by the shipping managers in their order of relative importance.