US-listed Performance Shipping has joined the client list of tanker pool operator Signal Maritime.

The 104,600-dwt aframax carrier Briolette (built 2011) is just one of three ships that have just entered the pool, a Signal executive told TradeWinds.

The other two are the 112,500-dwt Green Attitude (built 2018) and the 50,000-dwt Philoxenia (built 2019), with the latter ship joining Signal's MR tanker pool, which got up and running earlier this year.

The new additions bring the size of Signal's aframax and LR2 pool to 20 ships and its MR pool to 16.

Andreas Michalopoulos, chief executive officer of Performance Shipping, told TradeWinds that the company's chartering strategy remains unaltered and that the Briolette will continue trading in the spot market after its inclusion in the Signal pool.

Performance Shipping, which owns another four aframaxes, has a strategy of employing its vessels on short to medium-term charters.

The company expects Signal's "flexible" pooling arrangements to allow the ship to benefit from an expected tanker freight rate recovery in the weeks or months to follow, Michalopoulos said.

First MR addition since Shell deal

The Green Attitude, the second tanker to join Signal, is owned by Greece's Aegean Shipping Management. The ship was last known to be on a charter with Trafigura.

The Philoxenia, which is the third, is currently listed in the fleet of Greece's Niovis Shipping.

The Hyundai Mipo Dockyard (HMD)-built Philoxenia thus becomes the first ship to join Signal's MR pool after a headline deal in August that saw Shell entrust it with 10 such vessels, in what was the oil major's first ever cooperation with a pool.

Signal management had said at the time that Shell's move had "attracted significant interest from other shipowners looking to leverage Signal’s artificial intelligence-powered platform for their own fleets".

As with its already established aframax pool, the Ioannis Martinos-led outfit counts on its proprietary Signal Ocean data platform, which blends tech with chartering know-how, to provide real data and analysis.

Shell was one of the first companies to start using the Signal Ocean platform after Martinos launched it in 2018.