Employees of tanker companies International Seaways and Dorian LPG have been safe from coronavirus contamination because of two types of quarantine — working at home for shoreside staff and aboard ships for seafarers.
The point regarding seafarers was made by Dorian LPG USA chief executive John Lycouris last week in describing why its crews had been untouched by the virus.
“The situation has been muted because those ships are probably the safest places to be,” Lycouris said during an online conference with Value Investor’s Edge, moderated by J Mintzmyer.
“The ships give a much better chance to be quarantined than anywhere else in the world. And when [seafarers] do go into port, they don’t have the opportunity to get out.”
Social distancing
He said the “interface” at port has good social distancing.
“When we do have ships in dry dock or undergoing scrubber installations, you do have an interface, but that’s treated very carefully and is very regimented. The crew doesn’t come close to where others are,” he said.
New York-listed Dorian has not been allowing change of crew or shore leave under the circumstances, he said.
“We’re pretty well insulated from the virus, thank god,” Lycouris said.
Lycouris and Dorian LPG chief financial officer Ted Young were practising their own insulation. The executives mentioned they called into the conference with Mintzmyer separately from their homes.
It was the same for International Seaways chief executive Lois Zabrocky and chief financial officer Jeffrey Pribor two days earlier.
Zabrocky explained that International Seaways had shifted to remotely working, away from its offices on 3rd Avenue in New York, which is within the epicentre of Covid-19 outbreak in the US.
She said the company's IT chief is its worldwide coronavirus tsar.
“He was working for a couple weeks to make sure we’d be set up to work remotely as required. As of right now, our teams are working full-on, but not together,” she said.
“We are working remotely from our homes. We have some presence going to the office to make sure everything is copacetic there, but we’re working remotely.”
Keeping in touch
Zabrocky, herself a former seafarer, said management was doing its best to keep close tabs on quality of life for its crews.
“We consider ourselves to be pretty directly linked to our co-workers at sea and I’ve been sending messages to our crews,” she said.
“Knock on wood, we have not had anyone come down with coronavirus. But what has happened is the repatriation of crews worldwide has become more complex because some countries are not wanting you to disembark your people or send your people easily to sea.”
The company has close communication with all of its crews.
“I think they are on the front lines of this and doing an amazing job of soldiering on and getting through things,” she said.
