Russian winter is kicking in and prices for ice-class tanker tonnage are the toast of the industry now that new bans are in place against Moscow.
Russia and its willing oil buyers are paying “staggering” figures for ice-class tonnage, according to brokers at Cleaves. Libya’s GNTMC has sold a pair of 2006/2007-built 115,000 dwt aframaxes for a $86m en bloc to Chinese buyers, both vessels having Ice 1A notations. In December last year, by comparison, a 2006-built coated aframax was sold for $18.2m.
Thenamaris has sold its 2004-built, 115,000 tonner Seatrust for just over $34m, a ship with an Ice 1C notation, a ship the Greek owner paid a mere $11.5m for back in 2018.
Illustrative of this extraordinary demand for all available ice-class tonnage, Westport Tankers has achieved one of the fastest asset plays ever, selling the 2006-built, Ice1A, 146,000 dwt Mike R suezmax (pictured) for $45m, a ship purchased in August for $31m.
According to BRS data, there are currently 700 tankers of 34,000 dwt or above classed as ice-class 1C or above which equates to 13% of the entire 34,000+ dwt tanker fleet.
“The relatively small size of the Russian ice class fleet and the requirement that Russia maintain its oil exports at as close to today’s levels as possible explains why ice class tonnage has been changing hands for extremely high sums recently,” BRS stated in a recent tanker report.
Also making headlines recently among a host of old, non-ice class tankers sold recently has been a suezmax called Naviga built in 1998, for which unidentified Chinese buyers forked out $18.7m.
