Singapore’s Ocean Tankers has reportedly applied to be placed under the management of a court-appointed supervisor.
Singapore’s High Court was due to hold a hearing to consider an application by the VLCC owner on Tuesday, according to a notice on the Supreme Court website.
The case was due to be heard by Justice Kannan Ramesh.
The notice did not give further details, but Reuters, quoting two unnamed sources, said it had opted for judicial management.
Ocean Tankers is a unit of troubled oil trader Hin Leong Trading, which itself has applied to be placed a similar court-supervised restructuring.
In the case of Hin Leong, accounting firm PwC was reportedly appointed as interim judicial managers and were said to have up to eight weeks to file a preliminary report.
The report will include an assessment of whether the company can be restructured or rehabilitated.
$58.5m in liabilities
According to an affidavit filed last month, Ocean Tankers had $58.5m in liabilities to trade creditors excluding inter-company liabilities.
Standard Chartered Bank and ING are Ocean Tankers' largest secured creditors with outstanding debts of $17.7m and $16.8m respectively.
The tanker owner has a number of unsecured creditors with the top 20 of those owed a combined $8.3m, according to the affidavit.
Among these are Keppel Shipyard, Wartsila, ABB, PSA Marine, Alfa Laval, Chugoku Marine Paints and Braemar ACM Shipbroking.
However, reports have emerged that Ocean Tankers could be held accountable for Hin Leong debts due to misdelivered cargo claims potentially running to several billion dollars.
Last week, TradeWinds exclusively revealed that Ocean Tankers had moved a large proportion of its tanker fleet to remote anchorages to sit out the uncertainty surrounding its court-supervised restructuring efforts.
Out of 79 tankers larger than 10,000 dwt in the Ocean Tankers fleet located using vessel tracking portals, at least 44 were found to be idle.
Most are anchored in the South China Sea beyond Malaysian territorial waters close to the eastern entrance of the Singapore Strait. Others are drifting deeper into the South China Sea or in the Indian Ocean.
Six of the company’s 18 VLCCs are still being used in storage roles, five of which are anchored off Tanjung Pelepas, a Malaysian port opposite Singapore.
Four VLCCs are still trading, six appear to be idle and the whereabouts of another two is unknown.
