Pamban Ltd, a Marshall Islands-registered company that owns two elderly suezmax tankers managed out of India, has become the latest owner to recycle a tanker that has been absent from the mainstream market for several years.
Scrap brokers report that Pamban has sold the 157,500-dwt crude carrier Jal Gamini (built 2000) to cash buyers for $541 per ldt, or $12.2m, on an “as is” basis in Batu Ampar, Indonesia.
The Tanzanian-flagged tanker is the first suezmax to be sold for recycling in 2024. The vessel type, a popular purchase candidate for operators engaged in trades in the opaquer end of the tanker market, has been largely absent from recycling beaches since 2022.
VesselsValue data indicates the last suezmax recycling deal was done in October 2023, when Koban Shipping sold the 159,900-dwt Alana (built 1998) to Bangladeshi recyclers for $570 per ldt.
The Alana was the only suezmax that was scrapped last year.
Pamban is the latest in a string of companies that have owned or operated the Jal Gamini since it was sold as the Max Jacob by German KG (limited partnership) owner Ernst Jacob in 2019.
After two years under Thai ownership in a storage role, the ship resumed active trading in 2021 under the ownership of a variety of shell companies and was managed by entities in Dubai and India.
In quick succession the ship bore the names Taco, Kanha Pride and Putri Samudra, taking on its latest name last October when Pamban became its official owner.
Previous owner Strategic Alliance, also of the Marshall Islands, provided Pamban with another tanker in 2023. A 150,000-dwt vessel that Strategic Alliance traded under the name Sol Pride (built 2002) joined Pamban in August 2023 as Kapal Cantik.
Tanker brokers said they were unaware of how Pamban has been trading the Jal Gamini as the ship has not appeared on fixture lists for a long time.
However, Equasis sheds some insight on the ship’s locations based on its port state control inspections. Information in the database shows that all inspections since 2021 have occurred either at Malaysian transshipment anchorages or in Chinese ports.
Washington-based pressure group United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) has had the Jal Gamini on the list of tankers it accuses of engaging in the sanctioned Iranian oil trade since May 2022, well before it was acquired by Pamban.
Equasis shows that the Kapal Cantik, which is not on the UANI list, has been inspected in Russia and China during its brief time under Pamban ownership.
No other large tankers apart from the Jal Gamini have been reported as sold for recycling over the past week, as trading demand for tanker tonnage remains high.
The only other ships reported sold for recycling were a couple of handysize bulk carriers and an elderly floating production, storage and offloading vessel.
