Workers at a ship recycling facility in Alang set to cut up an elderly product tanker that recently arrived off their yard are unlikely to realise the trouble it once caused one of Israel’s richest families.
The 41,300-dwt MR2 product tanker Khuran (built 1992) completed a 31-year career when its final voyage, made under the name Seas, ended off Alang on 18 December.
It was a September 2010 sale when it was known as Raffles Park that turned the ship into a big headache for brothers Sammy and Yuli Ofer.
A big brouhaha broke out when it emerged that Noah Ship Management, the Dubai-based company that acquired the Raffles Park from Tanker Pacific Management, was a front for the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL).
The transaction led to Tanker Pacific and several other Ofer-affiliated companies coming under fire from US authorities for failing to exercise due diligence on the buyer.
Tanker Pacific denied any wrongdoing and managed to clear its name by showing there were no indications at the time that the Raffles Park ultimately would fall into Iranian hands.
The incident served as an industry wake-up call and led to shipowners employing more stringent vetting of entities expressing interest in buying their ships.
Typical of many vessels engaged in carrying Iranian oil sector exports, the former Raffles Park would subsequently pass through the hands of several low-profile registered owners and managers.
S&P Global data indicates that, as Khuran, it had most recently been owned by Hong Kong-registered Great Sparkle Investments and managed out of India while flying the flag of Togo.
Despite these many changes, the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control continued to link the vessel’s ownership to IRISL, while keeping it on its list of sanctioned vessels.
Set to join the Khuran on the beach at Alang is a former VLCC that has also until very recently had strong ownership links to Iran.
The 314,000-dwt floating storage and offloading vessel (FSO) FSU Soorena (built 1975) was listed in several broking reports published over the weekend as being sold to cash buyers on an as-is basis for an undisclosed price.
The ship, which was built for Shell as the tanker Lanistes, was stationed permanently off Iran after being converted into an FSO in 2001 for Shell Iran Offshore, a joint venture between the Dutch oil major and the National Iranian Oil Company (NOIC). It came under full Iranian ownership after Shell pulled out of the country because of international sanctions targeting its oil sector.
According to S&P Global data, the FSO was sold in November to Sintec Machinery Trading, a Dubai-registered single-ship company, and renamed Armila. Shortly after that, it was again sold, going to Marine Line, a Marshall Islands-registered company that renamed it Milan and placed it under the flag of St Kitts and Nevis.
Other recycling deals reported over the past week involved the smaller vessels that have formed the majority of the ships sold for scrap in recent months.
Indian ship recyclers were reported as buying Middle Bridge Maritime’s 8,200-dwt general cargo ship At Middle Bridge (built 1989) for $504 per ldt, or $1.7m, along with Nautilus Circle of Cyrpus’s 7,100-gt trailing suction hopper dredger Ibra (built 1986), Ahmed MSS of Mauretania’s 6,000-gt fish factory vessel Chime (built 1979), and SAS Middle East’s 1991-built offshore support vessel SAS 4.
Cash buyers picked up Indian owner Scope Maritime’s 70,400-dwt panamax bulk carrier Neptune 1 (built 1994) for $465 per ldt, or $4.6m, on an as-is Hong Kong basis for delivery to Gadani beach in Pakistan, while Singapore-based Straits Orient Lines sold the 653-teu container ship SOL Valour (built 1997) to cash buyers on an as-is basis in Colombo for $$535 per ldt, or $2m.
Wrapping up the list of recycling transactions for the week was US-based Diamond Offshore Services, which sold the semi-submersible drilling rig Ocean Monarch (built 1974) to cash buyers for $333 per ldt, or $7.1m on an as-is basis in Johor Baru, Malaysia.
