ICBC Leasing has sold two modern VLGCs to fellow Chinese finance house SPDB Financial Leasingfor an undisclosed price.
The ships are two of four sisterships on long-term bareboat charter to Shanghai-based VLGC owner Pacific Gas, which has them on long-term time charter to Chinese operator Oriental Energy (also known as Donghua Energy).
Two of the four ships were among the vessels that Oriental Energy, China's largest LPG importer, pulled from the Helios pool a year ago, citing a need to use the ships for proprietary cargoes.
ICBC Leasing ordered the four ships from South Korea's DSME for a reported $80m each. They are the 84,000-cbm Pacific Qingdao, Pacific Rizhao, Pacific Weihai, Pacific Yantai (all built 2016) chartered in from ICBC Leasing.
It was not immediately clear which two of these ICBC Leasing has sold, however.
An ICBC Leasing official confirmed the deal. An SPDB Financial Leasing official could not be reached before TradeWinds went to press. The company is a subsidiary of Shanghai Pudong Development Bank.
It is standard practice for Chinese leasing houses to balance their portfolios by sharing some parts of an asset package with other houses, said sources in the business. Buyers are often smaller or newer entrants into the leasing sector, or those that have been instructed by top management to build up a shipping portfolio in a hurry.
Pacific Gas, a subsidiary of Shandong Shipping Corp, has seven owned VLGCs in addition to the leased ships, as well as two large ethylene carriers (LECs) built at Nantong CIMC Sinopacific Offshore and Engineering and three more LECs under construction there.
