A Nigerian government organ has sold a controversial suezmax to its Dubai-based managers for $4m under scrap value.
TradeWinds understands that the 146,300-dwt Atlantic 1 (built 1996) has gone for something under $5m.
The scrap value of the ship is $8.95m, according to valuations platform VesselsValue.
Shipbrokers said they were unaware of the deal, but one commented that the ship's coated tanks make it worth more than an ordinary tanker of the same general description.
"Not many suezmax-sized tankers have all epoxy coated tanks. That makes it useful for the trade in which it is being used," said the broker, who is familiar with the ship's previous sale.
The buyer is an affiliate of little known Jampur International, the Dubai-based company that has been operating the vessel as a floating storage unit off Lagos on behalf of Nigerian National Petroleum Co (NNPC).
Jampur International is controlled by Mohammad Shafiq. Shipping databases credit the company with a single tug in addition to its new acquisition.
The seller was Asset Management Corp of Nigeria (Amcon), Nigeria's "bad bank", which disposes of distressed assets.
Sources believe that following the bargain sale, the ship will remain in place under charter to NNPC.
Amcon maintains a website listing current assets for sale, inviting tenders, and publicising repossessions and successful disposals of assets. But no trace of the ship is found on the site.
Transparency guidelines govern the body's sales of real estate and "specialised assets such as vessels, tank farms, jetties, aircrafts".
Sources interested in the transaction, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the vessel was never listed there or circulated to brokers.
In 2017, the ship made headlines, under its old name of Mongolia, after Greece's Eurotankers arrested it in Rotterdam. The shipowner claimed that in 2016, Amcon had agreed to a sale for some $8m and then called off the deal, with Amcon's broker saying that it pulled back the vessel "in view of the interest expressed by the federal government of Nigeria in retaining the vessel for national use".
Amcon and its representatives denied in a Dutch court that any sale had been final.
Floating storage role
The court ultimately cut Eurotankers' $5.83m damage claim to around $3.5m, and in January 2018 the ship was released and sailed to a position off Lagos, where it has remained as a floating storage vessel under the management of Jampur.
Sources involved in the earlier deal believe the Eurotankers claim was covered by the security that Amcon lodged with the court to allow the ship to sail.
The circumstances under which Amcon acquired the tanker remain obscure.
The ship had passed through a number of hands since Norway's Fred Olsen & Co ordered it at Harland & Wolff, but reference sources connect it to Amcon since around 2015.
Amcon's acquisition of the ship at that time followed a legal dispute whose details are unknown, related to a failed charter of the ship by Amcon from its immediately previous owner, VTN Shipping. VTN is an affiliate of John Fredriksen's private oil trading company Arcadia Energy.
Jampur chief executive Mohammad Shafiq could not immediately be reached for this story. Amcon and Eurotankers did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Officials of London law firm Tatham Macinnes and London brokerage Eggar Forrester, who represented Amcon in the earlier dispute, and Bergen-based Grieg Shipbrokers, who represented Eurotankers, said they have had no further involvement.
