A Chinese court has ordered the auction of Brightoil Petroleum's final tanker.
The 320,000-dwt VLCC Brightoil Gem (built 2013) will be sold on 19 November on the online platform Taobao.
Haikou Maritime Court made the order to sell the ship in a dispute over a vessel mortgage and loan dispute with French bank BNP Paribas.
Hong Kong-headquartered Brightoil had failed to provide any security or guarantee and the arrest period has now expired, the court said.
The starting bid has been set at CNY 390m ($55m), with the deposit CNY 30m.
Bids can be made in increments of CNY 100,000.
Earlier this month seven more tankers belonging to Brightoil were put up for sale, in addition to the three bunker tankers that TradeWinds reported previously as coming up for auction in Singapore.
Fleet going under hammer
The High Court of Hong Kong had previously been accepting sealed bid tenders for one VLCC and three aframax tankers that were arrested in January by lawyers from Watson Farley & Williams Hong Kong who were acting on behalf of Brightoil creditors.
Bidding for the 319,700-dwt Brightoil Galaxy (built 2012), the 115,600-dwt Brightoil League, the 115,000-dwt Brightoil Lucky and the 107,500-dwt Brightoil Legend (all built 2009) closed on 11 September.
Online platform VesselsValue estimates Brightoil Galaxy to be worth $65m, while the three aframaxes have an estimated market value of around $24m.
And the High Court of Singapore is selling three more of Brightoil’s small bunker tankers that have been under arrest since the early part of this year.
The 7,000-dwt vessels Brightoil 639 and Brightoil 666 (both built 2013), and the older Brightoil 688 (built 2008) will be sold via sealed bid tenders, with offers on them due in at the Sheriff of Singapore’s office at 3pm on Friday 20 September.
Earlier, the Sheriff of Singapore announced that the 4,100-dwt sisterships Brightoil 319 (built 2014), Brightoil 326 (built 2015), and Brightoil 329 (built 2017) would also be sold at auction, with offers closing on 13 September.
Previous auctions of Brightoil VLCC and aframax tonnage that took place in May and June attracted strong buyer interest, with two VLCCs sold to Delta Tankers and another to Zodiac Maritime, while Stealth Maritime picked up an aframax tanker.
The auction sales raised in excess of $200m, Brightoil said shortly thereafter.
