A Turkish tanker has given up on Norway and sailed to Belgium after waiting nearly a week for Norwegian authorities to review the ship’s connections to the Russian flag.
The owner is still expecting to be vindicated despite the slow speed of law enforcement.
The 4,600-dwt Dumankaya (ex-RN Magellan, built 2007), owned by Besiktas Likid Tasimacilik, was turned away from Slagen terminal near Tonsberg last week over concerns about sanctions enforcement. The ship trades with Sweden’s Alba Tankers, in which Turkey’s Besiktas Group is a shareholder.
The vessel was halted on 4 August and waited offshore until yesterday, 10 August, in hopes authorities would review the facts and clear the ship.
But charterer Petroineos decided Norway was taking too much time, and AIS reports show the ship now bound for Ghent.
“The charterer directed us yesterday morning [10 August] to discharge in Belgium,” said managing director Yavuz Kalkavan of the Besiktas Group.
As TradeWinds has previously reported, Norway believed that the ship had left the Russian flag too late to be free from sanctions. But the owner protested that the tanker has had no connection with Russia since it was delivered from a bareboat charter to Rosneft more than a year ago.
The Dumankaya was deregistered from the Russian flag in May 2021 but not recorded as reflagged to Turkey until early this year, well after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“We definitely do not agree [with Norway’s decision],” Kalkavan told TradeWinds. “Other European port states have cleared the ship. We are 100% clear on what our vessel situation is and we believe Norway will clear it.”
Military gets involved
Norwegian lawyers for Besiktas were still optimistic earlier this week that they could get sanctions enforcers to expedite the investigation in Norway and at Frontex, the Warsaw-based European border control agency, based on the ship’s previous clearance in the Netherlands earlier this year.
“I have spoken to the authorities several times today and pushed for a decision,” wrote lawyer Danielle Norum Phillips of Oslo’s IBF Legal in a message TradeWinds has seen. “If we can get a reply from Frontex confirming that their listing is wrong, then it is highly likely that we will get the vessel to port.”
Phillips declined to comment on the legal process.
But a shipbroker with direct knowledge of the issue said the matter had gone up the chain of command from port police at Tonsberg to high levels of the Norwegian military, who confirmed the local decision to turn away the ship.
The Besiktas Group has been an established player in the Nordic product tanker market for more than 20 years and its ships frequently call in Norwegian ports.
Kalkavan has previously told TradeWinds that the Dumankaya was redelivered in poor condition in May 2021 after its long bareboat charter to Rosneft.
It spent the interval until March this year at Turkter Shipyard, in part because of delays resulting from the pandemic. Following the long dry-docking, it has traded normally in European short-sea trades.
Reference sources confirmed that the ship has no current Russian involvement as regards ownership, management or flag.
