Connecticut-based Ridgebury Tankers is back in the VLCC business.
Chief executive Bob Burke confirmed on Monday that Ridgebury had bought out the interests of Wafra Capital Partners in four 2006-built and 2007-built VLCCs for $120m en bloc.
The quartet is under the commercial control of Belgium's Euronav, which financed them through a sale-and-leaseback transaction with Kuwait's Wafra in January 2017.
The tankers are the 307,000-dwt sisters Nautilus (built 2006) and Navarin, Neptun and Nucleus (all built 2007). They were built at China's Dalian Shipbuilding.
"We've worked with Euronav on a lot of projects, and we hope to continue working with them on this one," Burke said in a brief interview on Monday.
The financial deal agreed in 2017 has the quartet on bareboat charter to Euronav through late-December at $22,000 a day, which would be equivalent to about $5m per ship in the remaining term.
The reported sale price is substantially below levels estimated by VesselsValue, which puts the value of the ships at between $32m and $34.1m.
The tankers operate in Tankers International, a pool that Ridgebury has used when it owned VLCCs in the past.
Ridgebury first entered the VLCC trade in 2015 with an en-bloc purchase of four units from Independent Tankers Corp.
Ridgebury bought four more VLCCs in 2017 and 2018, with one being Euronav's 298,000-dwt Artois (built 2001). That vessel had been trading under Tankers International, and Ridgebury elected to keep it in the pool.
Euronav and Ridgebury also once shared joint ownership in a suezmax, the 159,000-dwt Bastia (built 2005).
The Connecticut shipowner began to sell off its VLCCs in 2019 and disposed of its final ships in June 2020.
