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Eastern Pacific Shipping swoops for former Sovcomflot LNG carriers

Singapore-based Eastern Pacific Shipping (EPS) has snapped up four LNG carriers that were previously owned by Russia’s Sovcomflot for just over $700m. 

Idan Ofer’s EPS bought the vessels directly from Dutch bank ING, which represented a consortium of European and international banks, including Societe Generale, Citibank, UniCredit, KfW Ipex-Bank, Credit Agricole and DNB.

The LNG vessels SCF Timmerman, SCF Barents, SCF Mitre and SCF Melampus come with charters attached to Shell.

Under the sanctions issued by both the EU and UK governments, banks were given a grace period to extricate themselves from Russian contracts and had until May 15 to cut their ties with Russian firms.

Sovcomflot said it was looking to sell some of its tonnage, and earlier this month, Splash reported a few off-market deals. Sources told Splash that one of Sovcomflot’s shipping arms, Novoship, had sold two ships, obtaining some $14m for two 18-year-old 47,000 dwt Hyundai Mipo-built ships named Pamir and Elbrus.

Another same-aged MR and aframax have also been sold in the opening days of the war with Ukraine. A ship named Tuchkov Bridge is now named Valor, while a 2005-built aframax, named Cangjie, has been renamed NS Challenge.

Adis Ajdin

Adis is an experienced news reporter with a background in finance, media and education. He has written across the spectrum of offshore energy and ocean industries for many years and is a member of International Federation of Journalists. Previously he had written for Navingo media group titles including Offshore Energy, Subsea World News and Marine Energy.
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