The owner of a VLCC held for months by Nigeria had no option but to pay $15m to end the “prolonged and wrongful” detention, its insurer said.
The 300,000-dwt Heroic Idun (built 2020) is due to arrive in Cape Town, South Africa next week to allow the 26 crew members to return home after being held for more than nine months on piracy and oil smuggling charges. The allegations were later dropped as part of a plea deal.
The deal included an agreement for the vessel to admit a maritime offence, pay $15m and issue a public apology, but the ship’s P&I insurer, Gard, has always insisted that the crew did nothing wrong.
“This is something that should have happened months ago,” said chief claims officer Christen Guddal.
“We hope there are lessons to be learned from all of this so that seafarers don’t have to find themselves in such terrifying and demanding circumstances again.”
The plea agreement, seen by TradeWinds, says the vessel is free to continue trading in Nigerian territory without hindrance after the compensation was paid.
In return for dropping the charges against the 26 men, the defendant — the ship — “is pleading guilty freely and voluntarily” and “not as a result of any undue influence”.
In its statement following the departure of the Heroic Idun from Nigerian waters, Gard made it clear that the vessel had no choice other than to accept the plea deal. Gard’s coverage of the Heroic Idun included P&I, hull and machinery and loss of hire.
“Regrettably, in order to secure the liberty and well-being of the crew and to end the prolonged and wrongful detention, the vessel had no other option than to accept a charge and to agree to make significant payments as well as other concessions as part of a plea bargain,” Gard said.
Nigerian authorities had claimed that the ship, owned by Idun Maritime, a subsidiary of Ray Car Carriers, attempted an unauthorised loading of oil from an offshore terminal in August 2022.
The Heroic Idun left the area fearing a piracy attack after an approach from an unidentified vessel in the dark, which was later revealed as a Nigerian patrol ship.
The tanker was subsequently detained by Equatorial Guinea, at the request of Nigeria, before being transferred three months later to Nigeria.
The ship’s flag state, the Marshall Islands, has brought a case against Equatorial Guinea at the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea.
Shipping expert Adedoyin Afun, a partner at Lagos legal firm Bloomfield Law, said the $15m plea deal was a commercial decision to end the case.
Victim of circumstances
“If you look at it from a marine hull war perspective, most policies have a clause that if the vessel is detained for a set period of time, this could be from six months to two years, it becomes a constructive total loss and the insurer pays out,” he said.
“It was the victim of circumstances and of miscommunication. It’s happened, unfortunately for her at a time when the Federal Government of Nigeria … spent a whole lot of money, and effort, to mop up the illegalities that previously existed in the Gulf of Guinea.”
