Daehan Shipbuilding is poised to win up to three suezmax tankers worth about $235m from Greece’s Tsakos Energy Navigation (TEN).
Shipbuilding players said the New York-listed unit of the Tsakos group has commissioned the South Korean shipyard to build the 158,000-dwt DP2s.
The deal is for one firm vessel plus two options.
“The shipbuilding contract will be signing imminently,” said a shipbuilding player.
The cost of the newbuildings has not been disclosed. But sources put the price at between $74m and $78m each, depending on the specifications.
A shuttle tanker costs 30% more than a conventional tanker, the shipbuilding player said. “The last suezmax tanker newbuilding deal done in South Korea was by Sonangol at Hyundai Heavy Industries, and the Angolan company was said to be paying $59m per ship.”
TEN chief operating officer George Saroglou disclosed last week that the company will be ordering up to three shuttle tankers in South Korea after securing long-term charter deals that could see it bank $250m. He fell short of disclosing the identity of the shipyard and the end-user for the newbuildings.
Shipping players to whom TradeWinds spoke suggested Portugal’s Galp Energia is the charterer of TEN’s DP2 suezmaxes.
Daehan officials declined to disclose details of discussions with TEN. However, they confirmed that they are “working hard” to secure shuttle tanker orders.
More complex
“Daehan has been building conventional aframax and suezmax tankers a long time,” one executive said. “We have never built shuttle tankers before. But we are upgrading and ... including the ship type into our products portfolio.
“The loading system of a shuttle tanker is more complex than the conventional aframax or suezmax tanker as it has a bow-loading system.
“Many well-established shipyards are able to construct conventional tankers but not many are building shuttle tankers, as it is a niche sector and demand for the ships comes from end-users’ requirements.”
HHI, Samsung Heavy Industries, DSME and China’s Cosco Heavy Industry (Zhoushan) are believed to be the only shipyards that are building shuttle tankers.
In 2018, TEN contracted Daehan to construct two 115,200-dwt aframax tankers for around $52m each. It took delivery of the first ship, Mediterranean Voyager (built 2019), last summer and the second unit, Caribbean Voyager (built 2020), in February.
Daehan is described by shipbuilding players as a “second-tier shipyard” that focuses on suezmax and aframax tankers.
According to Clarksons’ Shipping Intelligence Network, Daehan is sitting on an order backlog of 18 tanker newbuildings and one training ship. It is building suezmax tankers for NS Lemos and the Angelicoussis Group, as well as aframax crude carriers for Sun Enterprises, Valles Steamship and Minerva Marine, among others.
Daehan recently received $53m in loans from Kwangju Bank to help it ride out the order slump that has resulted from the Covid-19 pandemic.
