Euronav has sold the world’s second-biggest tanker, in a deal that will likely see the ship operating as a floating storage and offloading unit in the future, under Chinese control.
US and Greek brokers report that the Belgian tanker owner, led by chief executive Alexander Saverys since the closing days of last year, has unloaded the 442,000-dwt Oceania (built 2003).
New York and Brussels-listed Euronav declined to comment on reports of the deal.
Leading shipping databases, however, suggest that a change of ownership has indeed taken place.
Corroborating broker information that the Oceania has passed under Chinese ownership in a private deal, the S&P Global database shows the ship as owned since December by leasing giant Minsheng Financial Co under the rejigged name of SA Oceania.
The price tag for the likely deal remains under wraps.
Valuation platforms VesselsValue and Signal Ocean estimate the Oceania is worth about $41m, which is well below the $49.6m that the tanker could have fetched in April of last year.
The figure, however, is well above the $36.4m that VesselsValue estimates it would fetch currently in a scrap sale.
The Oceania’s demolition and trading values had been identical up until October 2022, when the hot tanker asset market bolstered the ship’s worth for further trading.
Storage play
The Oceania is one of four ultra-large crude carriers in the so-called TI class — a reference to the Tankers International pool of which Euronav is a founding member.
All were built at Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering and were the largest tankers in the world by gt, in addition to being nearly the largest vessels in the world overall.
The Oceania remains the world’s second-biggest tanker by dwt, according to Clarksons data.
Including the Oceania, three such vessels remained in Euronav’s fleet — left out of a $2.34bn sale of 24 VLCCs to Frontline as part of a wider deal to end a dispute with Norwegian shipping tycoon John Fredriksen.
None are trading as ULCCs in the tanker market. The 432,000-dwt FSO Asia and FSO Africa (both built 2002) have both been converted into FSOs.
The Oceania has also been on dedicated storage duties, operating off the coast of Malaysia to hold bunker fuel for Euronav’s own account, with some space provided to other shipping companies.
A broker told TradeWinds he could not imagine a buyer of the Oceania using the ship for any other purpose than storage.
The vessel’s new ownership data confirms that view.
S&P Global has featured the vessel since December under the management of a Singapore-based firm called Beyond Shipmanagement Services Pte Ltd.
Beyond Shipmanagement, an entity registered in 2022, is listed with another four FSOs that had been previously trading as VLCCs.
A fourth TI class vessel that Euronav sold in October 2022, the 442,000-dwt Europe (renamed SA Europe, built 2002), has emerged in the fleet of United Ship Management since — another Singapore-based company that manages ships on behalf of Minsheng Financial.
Euronav seems to have been intending to get rid of the Oceania for quite some time. Brokers reported as early as in January 2023 that an unknown buyer spent $50m on the ship. Such a deal, however, never materialised.
If the Oceania was sold at its present market value last month, it would likely fetch a profit for the Belgian shipowner, which bought the ship nearly six years ago from International Seaways for $32.5m.
The Oceania made headlines once more in March 2023, when Euronav said it was investigating claims put forward by United Against Nuclear Iran, a US-based lobby group, that the ship was preparing to receive a cargo of US-sanctioned Iranian crude in a ship-to-ship transfer.
