MM Marine, an Athens-based unit of Swiss commodity trader Mercuria, is divesting its only big tanker in what is very likely a highly lucrative deal.
Brokers in the US, London and Greece have reported that the company unloaded the 162,300-dwt Umnenga II (built 2006).
A rare type of ship, the Unmenga II is an epoxy-coated suezmax tanker that comes equipped with a scrubber and ice-class 1AS strengthened.
The price or the buyers of the ship remain unknown and managers at MM Marine did not respond to a request for comment.
Given current on-the-spot valuations of $38.8m by Signal Ocean and of $45m by VesselsValue, a sale will likely represent a brilliant deal for the company, which bought the Umnenga II at half the price nearly two years ago.
Until late October 2021, the ship was trading as Seaways Saugerties (built 2006) with US-listed International Seaways, which then sold it for between $20.7m and $21.8m.
Mercuria seems to have acquired the ship with specific business in mind.
According to Clarksons, the Umnenga II has been employed as an oil storage vessel.
According to Signal Ocean data, the ship has been taking on and discharging crude oil on several occasions since December 2021 at Coega, near Port Elizabeth in South Africa.
Despite its capacity to hold oil products as well, the Umnenga II had been carrying crude oil well before it joined Mercuria.
According to Clarksons data, it had such cargo on all its voyages between 2019 and 2020 on account of major charterers, such as Repsol, Total and Shell.
Coated vs uncoated
This is not strange, given that hopes placed in the big clean product tankers have not been fulfilled.
The vessels were supposed to enjoy the lowest unit costs across the product tanker segments against a favourable refining landscape.
In the real world, however, LR3s have been losing employment opportunities to uncoated newbuilding tankers that can load refined products in their first voyages.
This has resulted in predictions of “a slow, painful death” for LR3s, in the words of an Alphatanker analyst a little more than two years ago.
Even surging tanker market prospects in the wake of the Ukraine war have not improved the situation. According to VesselsValue data, the last LR3 order was placed in 2016.
As a result, their number has remained limited and LR3 transactions in the secondhand market have been few and far between.
If confirmed, the sale of the Unmenga II will be just the fourth deal for such a vessel this year. In all three previous cases, the buyers have been Asian.
In a similarly profitable deal back in March, Greece’s Salmar divested the 159,400-dwt Okeanos (built 2003), since renamed Narcisuss, in a sale to China-based Taihong Shipping at a $16m markup.
Another LR3 that changed hands in an all Vietnamese-deal between Fgas Petrol and Hung Phat Maritime Trading was the 158,800-dwt Gracy (built 2007), which now trades as the Hera.
According to VesselsValue, the 159,400-dwt Tjatse (built 2003) was sold as well but other reference sources maintain that the ship is still with its previous owners, Singapore-based Higo Tankers.
