Ardmore Shipping Corp may not be installing exhaust gas scrubbers on its vessels anytime soon -- if ever.
"We've chosen for the time being not to go down the scrubber route," chief executive Anthony Gurnee said during today's third-quarter earnings call with analysts.
"Our own view is that the return on investment and the risks around it for an MR are not particularly compelling the way we see it."
He said putting the devices on Ardmore's fleet of 28 tankers, including 22 medium-range vessels, would cost either $60m or $70m.
"Quite frankly, we would be buying ships rather than installing scrubbers, if we had that kind of capital ready to invest," he said.
He said his company would buy ships in the seven-to-ten-year age range if it were to make such an investment.
Gurnee said Ardmore is staying away from scrubbers because his company often does not know its ships' destinations because charterers are given various discharge options.
"What will be available at ports is really the question," he said.
This also makes it difficult to know exactly how much bunker to load onto an MR given the destination is an unknown variable, he said.
"It's not that it's not a good investment or something that we think is good move by some companies but we don't think it's the way we trade our ships and the way we think about capital allocation it's interesting but not compelling for an MR," he said.
