Peter Livanos company GasLog is looking to lock more vessels into period contracts after taking the “tough decision” to quit the Cool Pool this summer.
New York-listed GasLog quickly fixed two former pool ships to Gunvor after pulling out from the spot venture with Golar LNG and Dynagas.
Paul Wogan, chief executive of GasLog, said: “We believe that the recent signs of increased activity in the spot market are evidence of tightening supply and demand for LNG shipping.
“We will use this anticipated improvement and our strong customer relationships to fix some of our open ships on multi-month and multi-year charters.”
As previously reported, Gunvor fixed the 155,000-cbm GasLog Shanghai (built 2013) to Gunvor for three and a half years-and the 155,000-cbm GasLog Salem (built 2015) on a shorter nine-month contract.
Ben Nolan, an analyst at Stifel, said in addition to taking delivery of its newbuildings, GasLog would also focus on finding term employment for some of the seven ships either already in the spot market or coming off contract this year or next.
“We expect it may be challenging for any TFDE or Steam engine ships to lock in duration beyond two to three years, but there does appear to be a good market currently for one-year business,” he added.
Wogan said the decision to pull out of the Cool Pool was influenced by Golar’s plans to spin-off its spot fleet into a new public company.
“But it also coincided with what we feel is going to be a stronger period in the market and we would like to have a large proportion of our fleet on longer term charters,” he added.
“Whereas we may keep one, two or three of our ships in the spot market at any given time, most of the ships we’ll put on a long-term charter.
“Having our ships outside the Cool Pool allows us to have negotiations with charters right from spot market, right through to you know long-term charters and
“I think you saw evidence of that with the Gunvor charters,” he added. “If we had been in the Cool Pool we wouldn’t have been able to have both those discussions with them.”
