Tsakos Energy Navigation is reporting delays in scrubber installations.
On its second quarter earnings call Friday, the New York-traded gas and oil carrier told investors exhaust gas cleaner retrofits ahead of IMO 2020 were "longer than initially forecasted".
"Shipyards [are working] at full capacity to meet retrofitting requirements, which could keep longer a big part of the global fleet in shipyards, rather than trading" potentially leading to more scrapping, said chief operations officer George Saroglou.
Delays, scrapping and a low orderbook, Saroglou suggested, could hold the world fleet down more than expected, lifiting shipowners to bigger profits.
Tsakos officials did not explicitly say whether or not their ships were being held up or there were general delays across the industry.
The company plans to have eight of its ships outfitted with scrubbers. The company currently has 62 ships in its fleet, with another four on order, all of which will have scrubbers.
Tsakos is not the only company reporting scrubber delays. In August, Diamond S Shipping disclosed that three ships expected to have scrubbers installed in the fourth quarter were moved to the first quarter of 2020.
For the first six months of the year, Tsakos posted an $11.5m profit, a considerable year-over-year improvement from the $21.5m loss.
