Singaporean tanker owner Xihe Holdings has reportedly sold one of its idle MR2-type product tankers to Sol Selene Shipping of Panama.

Market sources believe that more of its product tankers could be moving on to new owners in the very near future.

Tanker sources in Singapore said on Monday that Sol Selene is in the process of taking delivery of Xihe’s 50,400-dwt Ocean Moonbeam (built 2005), which is being renamed Red Ruby.

VesselsValue has also reflected the change of ownership and name of the SLS-built vessel. Although the online database did not report a sale price, it estimated that the ship was worth $9.4m.

The Red Ruby will be Sol Selene’s first and so-far, only ship. Panamanian corporate registries list the company as having been formed in December 2020.

Broking sources said they believed that United Arab Emirates-based buyers are ultimately behind the purchase.

VesselsValue indicates that the Ocean Moonbeam’s sale brings to 41 the number of vessels Xihe has sold since the collapse of Singapore billionaire’s Lim Oon Kuin’s oil trading and shipping empire in early 2020.

The dispersal of the Xihe tanker fleet that was previously operated by Lim family-controlled Ocean Tankers has been a slow but steadily ongoing process.

TradeWinds understands from market observers that the company’s judicial managers and creditors are avoiding to a quick sell-off at fire-sale prices by making ships available in batches for tender sales, with others being sold through regular broking channels.

While some buyers have paid slightly below market for Xihe tonnage, none have been the bargains deals that potential buyers had initially anticipated.

Buyer preference has mostly hovered over the company’s larger LR1 product tankers and VLCCs, and its smaller coastal and bunker tankers.

So far only three of its medium-range 1 and 2 type product tankers have been sold, leaving another 21 as sales candidates.

More might soon be leaving the fleet. A handful of the company’s product and crude tankers that spent much of the past year anchored in the South China Sea have recently arrived at Singapore’s eastern anchorage.

Moving the ships to Singapore, where they are protected from creditor action due to Xihe’s being under the High Court of Singapore’s judicial management process, makes it easier for potential buyers to inspect the vessels and well as undergo the handover process.

TradeWinds has approached Xihe’s interim judicial managers Grant Thornton Singapore for comment.