Bondholders have agreed to take over moribund Middle East owner Polarcus' sole remaining vessel, while plotting expansion through a deal to acquire Fugro's seismic exploration business.

Bond trustee Nordic Trustee said a new holding company — PXGEO Group — has been formed in the Cayman Islands as part of a restructuring deal that will likely see Polarcus liquidated.

The shipowner had six of its seven ships seized by its lenders in January after it defaulted on a loan when bank waivers ended.

Its last ship is the 4,711-gt Vyacheslav Tikhonov (built 2011), which is bond financed and had been chartered for three years to Russia's Sovcomflot (SCF Group).

The Russian company has agreed to continue the firm hire period until November 2022, with options for another three years. Polarcus is getting $19,800 per day for the vessel.

Had the charterer terminated the deal, Polarcus considered it very unlikely that an alternative would have been found, "in light of the significant number of seismic vessels which are currently idle, many of which are younger and have greater streamer-towing capacities" than the Vyacheslav Tikhonov.

Some claims waived

The restructuring deal sees bondholders waiving $33.87m of their claims, this being the price agreed for the Vyacheslav Tikhonov.

The $125m bonds had been due in July 2022, and about $59m is still outstanding.

Polarcus has been facing legal action after being unable to perform an Asian charter for Eni due to the banks' seizure of the fleet.

The company had arranged a one-month charter for 3D survey work last July. The job had been due to start in the first quarter.

Now this contract has been amended to allow the Sovcomflot-chartered vessel to perform it — an agreement that helped persuade the Russian company not to scrap its charter.

The bondholders have also entered into a bareboat charter for Sinopec's idle 10,900-gt seismic survey vessel Fa Xian 6 (built 2013), which is to be renamed PXGEO 2, to perform another seismic contract in Asia, starting in the third quarter.

Polarcus will provide management services until the jobs are complete.

New working capital

To support the new operation, bondholders are providing $10m to PXGEO as working capital.

Meanwhile, PXGEO has agreed to buy Seabed Geosolutions — the non-core subsidiary of Dutch contractor Fugro — for $16m.

The divestment includes Seabed's ocean bottom node (OBN) inventory, handling equipment, related technology and order backlog.

In addition, a significant number of personnel responsible for delivering Seabed Geosolutions' business will transition to PXGEO.

Fugro will take a pre-tax profit hit of between €8m ($9.4m) and €10m on the deal.