Elandra Tankers has reportedly sold off two ships in its VLCC fleet at prices that have not been seen for well over a decade.

US and UK brokers said the Swiss company — , a joint venture involving trading giant Vitol — has sold the 300,000-dwt Elandra Denali and Elandra Elbrus (both built 2020) to Saudi shipping giant Bahri for $112m each.

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At that price, Elandra is not only locking in a profit on the $92m newbuilding price that it reportedly paid for the vessels when it ordered four of the large tankers at South Korea’s Hyundai Heavy Industries back in 2018. The quartet, all named after mountains, were all built in 2020.

The joint venture of Vitol and Standard Chartered Bank is also garnering $4.5m per ship more than the $107.5m price tag that it scoredfrom selling the sibling VLCC Elandra Everest in late October.

Sources familiar with the vessels said the sales have yet to be concluded. A Vitol spokeswoman said the company does not comment on vessel transactions.

For Bahri, a listed company whose largest shareholders are oil giant Saudi Aramco and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, the addition of Elandra’s tankers would bring it its second and third newest vessels in what is one of the world’s largest VLCC fleets.

The Elandra Everest went to Dubai’s Al Seer Marine, which has renamed it Acrux.

The sale brings tanker and bulker owner Al Seer Marine’s VLCC fleet up to three vessels. Nitin Mathur, the company’s head of commercial shipping, told TradeWinds that the company has a positive view on the crude sector, and saw the Elandra Everest as a good opportunity.

Meanwhile, New York-listed Tsakos Energy Navigation has emerged as the buyer of the Elandra Kilimajaro, meaning all four VLCCs ordered at HHI have been sold. The company previously said it signed the deal for the vessel in June, without disclosing the ship’s name or the price. It has been renamed Dias I.

But the frothy price tag attached to the Elandra Denali and Elandra Elbrus come at a time when tanker crude values are on a tear, propelled by buoyant spot markets.

The Baltic Exchange’s Tanker Sale & Purchase Assessment, which weighs a cross section of tanker values, ended last week at 6,249 points. That is the highest reading since February 2009, when ship prices were spiralling downward in the wake of the global financial crisis.

Rising price assessments

Similarly, Clarksons’ price estimate for a five-year-old VLCC reached $90m at the end of the week, a $1m improvement on the previous Friday and the level since November 2010.

But Elandra’s ships have a leg up on vessels from more than a decade ago. For starters, they are fitted with exhaust gas scrubbers, a technology designed to allow use of heavy fuel oil under the global sulphur emissions cap imposed at the start of 2020.

Scrubber-fitted VLCCs are currently benefiting from a premium in spot charter markets that is worth $15,200 per day on top of average time charter equivalent earnings of $80,200 per day for non-eco vessels without the equipment, according to an estimate by tanker broker Howe Robinson on Monday.

But the Elandra tankers are also eco vessels, meaning they have electronic injection engines that boost fuel economy.

Eco VLCCs with scrubbers can earn $21,000 per day more, equating to a 26% premium, in the spot market compared to similar vessels without both fuel technologies, according to Howe Robinson.

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