The petroleum company studied sets the target for the total oil stock using many factors, but does not consider in its methodology the costs incurred in shipping. Length of stay above the standard will generate significant additional costs in the oil transportation. Knowledge of the factors that affect the stay can help identify the actions that must be taken to reduce costs. Thus, in order to contribute to the reduction of shipping costs, the objective of this work is to verify the dependence between the stay of ships in a large terminal of the company and other variables of the supply chain. The historical data on the duration of the ship stay, inventory, production, refining, sale and purchase of oil in the years 2016 and 2017 were obtained from the company s internal systems and were statistically evaluated. The regression that best explained the number of ships waiting berthing at the terminal studied contained as independent variables the company s total oil stock, the refining, the oil stock of the terminals and refineries served by the terminal studied and the number of ships waiting berthing in the previous period. Using the equation of the selected model, increases in the total oil inventory cause a 11 percent higher excess of stay cost than the increase in the financial cost of the stock. Thus, based on the results obtained, this work proposes that the impact of the inventory level on the ship s stay have to be considered in the calculation of the target stock, which will bring tens of millions of dollars a year earnings for the company studied.