Norway's ADS Crude Carriers has fixed out one of its veteran VLCCs for an eye-catching $69,000 per day over six months.
The 299,000-dwt ADS Page (built 2002) will begin the deal at the start of April following its current spot voyage, the Oslo-listed company said. However, it did not name the charterer.
After this agreement, ADS has booked up 500 vessel days in 2020 — about 45% of its total — at an estimated average of $72,000 per day.
This includes voyages already completed in firm markets.
The charter deal was done against a background of spiking VLCC spot rates, which have reached $180,000 per day.
Earlier this month, Oslo-listed Hunter Group achieved $80,000 per day for three vessels on six-month deals, but these were newly built VLCCs.
This rate was described by analysts as "extraordinary".
Cleaves Securities head of research Joakim Hannisdahl said the vessel would probably be used for storage off Singapore.
"Although at stellar levels, the charter is bittersweet as we hear talks of similar storage work at higher levels, while the VLCC FFAs indicate an average TCE (modern, non-scrubber) of around $125,000 per day over the same period of time," he said.
"The charter has however likely taken many days to conclude, and the market moved very much towards the end of last week."
He added: "A positive is that ADS Page is currently in discharge position in Thailand and on current charter until around 18 April, which means it gets paid “double” from overlapping charters on a round-voyage basis."
In February, ADS said it had made back 30% of its scrubber retrofit costs in just two months.
The company completed installations on its three tankers earlier than expected last year, and has saved $3.6m so far this year by using heavy fuel oil rather than the more expensive low-sulphur bunkers. The retrofits cost $12m in total.
ADS also spent $10.5m on intermediate vessel surveys, which were previously estimated at $7.5m.
The yard stays accounted for 25% of vessel days in the fourth quarter.
