With the tanker sale-and-purchase market warming up after a lull in late February, Far Eastern and other Asian buyers are crawling out of the woodwork again.
In a deal widely reported by brokers this week, Middle Eastern interests are said to be swooping on a 20-year-old, Greek-controlled aframax.
Vassilis Laliotis-led Sea World Management & Trading is said to be offloading one of its oldest aframaxes, the 106,100-dwt Sea Hazel (built 2004), for $29m.
Managers at the company did not respond to a request for comment.
The same ship was mistakenly reported as sold before, in May 2023, for about $30m. Even though no sale materialised at the time, others by Sea World did — in a sign that the Athens-based firm has been on the prowl for potential vessel buyers recently.
In transactions that passed largely unnoticed over the course of 2023, it offloaded two of its oldest product tankers.
Last June, Sea World’s 47,100-dwt Sea Horizon (built 2003) emerged as Ederra in the managed fleet of Seychelles-based Kings & Queens Marine Corp.
Another deal followed in December for the 45,900-dwt Sea Helios (renamed Sunrise, built 2004), which has since joined the fleet of Istanbul’s Oceanquest Maritime.
The Sea Helios probably changed hands at a price above $15m, which is more than the $14.3m Sea World spent to buy it 11 years earlier.
Seas World’s recent sales have left it with 17 tankers, from MRs to suezmaxes. The oldest ships in the fleet are two aframaxes and one MR built in 2004.
Bouncing back
If its sale is confirmed, the Sea Hazel would be the oldest aframax changing hands in the secondhand market this year, according to VesselsValue.
The oldest so far is Eastern Pacific’s Japanese-built and scrubber-fitted 105,900-dwt Koro Sea (built 2008, renamed Pacific 01), which fetched about $40m at the end of January and has emerged since with Vietnam-based Pacific Ocean Energy.
On 2 February, Turkey’s Kaptanoglu Group reportedly sold the 115,800-dwt Afra Rossi (built 2010) to Chinese interests for $45.5m.
The Afra Rossi deal has not been confirmed yet. The same goes for the 115,100-dwt Seliger (built 2009), which several brokers reported this week as being bought by Chinese interests for more than $46m.
The Seliger’s Greek owner, Roswell Tankers, however, denies that any such transaction took place.
All this activity shows buyers warming up to the secondhand market for older crude carriers, which had been subdued lately, given the elevated prices.
“Despite the anaemic activity on the S&P front compared to weekly volumes earlier in January, some fresh enquiries have been emerging in the past days, indicating that we could soon start seeing an improved number of transactions,” Eva Tzima, head of research at Seaborne Shipbrokers, wrote on Monday.
“Interest from … prospective buyers was focused on bigger MRs up to Afra/LR2 units, with some older crude carriers also getting attention despite their firm asking levels.”
