Nordic American Tankers is continuing to fix its older ships, sometimes ahead of rivals’ younger tonnage, chief executive Herbjorn Hansson says.
Asked on a conference call if having some suezmaxes over 20 years of age is causing the US-listed company any trouble, he replied: “The answer is no.”
NAT has added newer ships in secondhand deals of late, but five of its 14m-barrel tankers still date from 2003, 2004 and 2005.
“I can tell you that ExxonMobil, one of the top companies in the world, they just scrapped a ship which is 38 years of age. Three-eight,” Hansson added.
He also mentioned a fixture in which NAT offered an 18-year-old ship against one owned by a competitor that was built three years ago.
The other company told him of course it would get the business because of the respective ages of the tankers.
But Hansson said the charterer was reminded that the owner of the other ship had just come out of jail at the time.
“So the oil companies know they have to deal with the good people who have the good ships,” he said.
“And from time to time, they say they like to do [deals] with [younger] ships and I say fine, that’s fine. But they are opportunistic, but they go for quality. Quality is the main thing of our operation.”
Hansson said he would not have invested “tens of millions of dollars” in his company if he did not believe in it.
“I’m really putting our money where our mouth is,” he said.
“And a company generally can go three ways: it can go up, it can go sideways, it can go down. And I’m absolutely confident this company is on the way up.”
The CEO also reiterated that NAT has big institutional investors as shareholders and major oil companies as close partners.
