Shaking out its oldest ships for scrap or further trading is nothing unusual for Maran Tankers, but the Greek shipping giant probably never found a sweeter spot than this to do it.
With tanker price indexes climbing to 13-year highs, the Maria Angelicoussis company is rumoured to have sold its second-oldest ship at price levels that has market players scratching their heads in incredulity.
According to some brokers in London and the US, the 320,800-dwt Maran Aquarius (built 2005) is changing hands for between $52m and 52.5m.
One US broker reporting the deal described it as concluded “at an astronomically high price that defies imagination”. Another based in the UK commented that the price “sounded ridiculous”.
If the information is accurate, it would mean that S&P markets for large ships have reached levels that would have been unthinkable just a few months ago — even for a ship like the DSME-built Maran Aquarius, which comes equipped with a scrubber.
Market valuation platforms, which already find it hard enough to keep track with an increasingly frenetic market, estimate the Maran Aquarius’s value at much lower levels.
Signal Ocean puts it at $39.4m, according to latest figures available to the shipping data platform by 23 September. VesselsValue estimates the ship is currently worth $44.3m, while MSI Horizon projects its price to range between $42m and $50.6m in the fourth quarter.
Maran Tankers, the purported seller, has not offered to provide clarity into the sales reports. A request for comment sent to the company by TradeWinds has been so far left unanswered. Maran has previously stated that its standard policy is to not comment on commercial matters.
Back from the dead
The VLCC is rumoured to have gone to Chinese buyers.
That would be in line with recent market trends that saw Asian interests, whether based in the Middle or the Far East, scooping up older tanker tonnage.
Their most likely employment will be in Russian oil trades that are increasingly shunned by Western players in the wake of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
These conditions are believed to have led to other remarkable VLCC deals, recently.
As TradeWinds already reported on 30 September, the 310,000-dwt Viki (built 2000) — another vintage VLCC formerly controlled by Maran and then taken over in late 2020 by a mysterious Cyprus-based company, which sold it for scrap to cash buyers a few months ago — is now said to have been flipped for further trading at $29.5m.
Also in September Saudi Arabia's Bahri was reported as selling the 316,800-dwt Hilwah (built 2002) was to Chinese interests for $37.5m.
An even older VLCC that has been resurrected in the same fashion seems to be the 300,000-dwt Pride (built 1998), which US brokers say is fetching $24.5m.
This ship is the former Oman Pride, which had been blacklisted over western sanctions against Iran and was then reported sold for scrap late last year.
The Pride had been already been towed to Chittagong in Bangladesh before market conditions changed, making it attractive in the eyes of prospective buyers.
