Speculation sweeping the market that Torm has completed the purchase of the Primorsk International Shipping tanker fleet has quickly cooled today.
The Danish owner was tipped to have picked up the five medium range and four aframax tankers in a deal priced in the $200m range.
Sources with knowledge of the ongoing sales process say Torm has not completed a transaction and some suggest the deadline for the deal has now been extended with more than one company still in the race.
The sale of the fleet that Primorsk took into Chapter 11 is being handled by Clarksons Platou.
Torm was described as a logical buyer of the vessels given the aframaxes can trade both clean and dirty.
Primorsk’s bankruptcy filing shows some $263 in debt, mostly due to a creditors’ consortium led by Nordea Bank.
The ships comprise the 104,500-dwt Zaliv Amurskiy and Zaliv Amerika (both built 2008); two long-range-two (LR2) product tankers, the Zaliv Baikal and Zaliv Vostok (both built 2009); and five MR products tankers, the Prisco Elena, the Prisco Elizaveta, the Prisco Irina (all built 2009), the Prisco Alexandra, and the Prisco Ekaterina (both built 2008).
