COSL disposes of oil shipping business
China Oilfield Service (COSL), the oil and gas service unit of Chinese state oil energy giant CNOOC, has approved a plan to sell its tanker shipping business along with the only two tankers in its fleet to Northsea Shipping.
COSL will sell the two 1999-built 5,000dwt small clean tankers Bin Hai 607 and Bin Hai 608, and their related businesses for a price of RMB84.8m ($12.2m) in total.
According to COSL, its crude oil transportation qualifications aren’t able to be renewed after their expiration in March 2019 as the company cannot meet the requirements of the Ministry of Transport on interprovincial crude oil shipping capacity of 35,000 tons.
“In order to avoid affecting the production of oil fields due to the outage of tankers, the company intended to transfer the aforesaid tankers and related business to Northsea Shipping,” the company said.
Northsea Shipping is a joint venture set up by CNOOC, Cosco and Sinochem. The company owns a fleet of six tankers.
COSL expects to complete the deal no later than December 15.