Greek handysize owner Cosmoship Management has won the release of its ship from arrest in India.
The ship was snared by a court order after a charterer's bunkering payment took months to make it to an intermediary and Cosmoship was left to deal with the consequences.
TradeWinds reported on Monday that the 32,600-dwt bulker Liberty C (built 2012) had been arrested by bunkerer GP Global over an unpaid fuelling of another Cosmoship vessel, the 30,000-dwt Niki C (built 2012).
The shipowner's lawyer in Gujarat, Shashank Agrawal of SSA Legal, confirmed that the Liberty C was released thanks to his firm's "prompt and effective strategy". He declined to divulge the details.
But Cosmoship managing director Nikos Savvas told TradeWinds that after the arrest he discovered that the charterer had long since paid the fuel bill.
But the money had taken months to make its way to all the parties in a fuel supply chain, in particular Dubai-based GP Global, which sat in the middle of the chain.
GP Global has recently faced financial struggles, which have come at a time of jitters of the bunkering market about the perils of extending credit to players on financially shaky ground.
Savvos told TradeWinds his ship was arrested as an indirect result of such circumstances. Shipowners, charterers and bunkers resellers fear being forced to pay for the same fuel twice, as many did after OW Bunker went bust in November 2014.
As shipowner, Cosmoship had nothing to do with the charterer's fuel bill. But ship arrest gives unpaid suppliers a way of incentivising shipowners to find out what went wrong when bills go unpaid.
"I went to the charterer, whom I know very well and said, 'Didn't you pay the physical supplier? Make sure the physical supplier is paid, now! And they did the same day, plus expenses'" " Savvas recalled.
As it turned out, however, it was not the physical supplier had gone unpaid.
The charterer, Israeli fertiliser exporter Dead Sea Works, had paid bunkerer Peninsula Petroleum to fuel Niki C on 5 July in the Indian port of Cochin. Peninsula passed the job to GP Global, which in turn sourced the fuel from physical supplier Hindustan Petroleum.
GP Global, the former GP Petroleum, had paid Hindustan but did not get remunerated until Peninsula was sure the physical supplier had received payment.
The ship lost three days before the High Court of Gujarat issued an order releasing Liberty C, Savvas said. The ship was expected to sail with the high tide on Friday morning.
Savvas considers the arrest improper and is mulling legal action of his own. However he said that, fortunately, the arrest did not cause the Liberty C to miss its next scheduled cargo, a load of fertiliser from Jubail to Bangladesh.
Officials of GP Global and Peninsula Petroleum did not respond to requests for comment.
