Restis family outfit Golden Energy Management has signed up for one suezmax tanker newbuilding at DH Shipbuilding, lifting its order tally there to two.
Shipbuilding sources said Golden Energy’s latest 158,000-dwt tanker newbuilding was an option that the company held at DH Shipbuilding when it signed for a tanker in January.
Officials at DH declined to comment on the shipyard’s shipbuilding activities citing contract confidentiality.
Golden Energy is believed to be paying about $77m each for the newbuildings. The crude carriers will be conventionally fuelled and will not be equipped with scrubbers.
DH is slated to deliver the first vessel in late 2024 and the second during the first quarter of 2025.
Golden Energy has just one such vessel in its fleet, the 157,500-dwt Energy Triumph (built 2018). Clarksons’ Shipping Intelligence Network shows the Hyundai Samho-built tanker is owned by CSSC (Hong Kong) Shipping — the leasing arm of China State Shipbuilding Corp.
The Restis family refinanced the Energy Triumph in December 2020 through a 10-year sale-and-bareboat charter back deal worth $57.6m with the Chinese leasing company.
In the MR segment, Golden Energy controls six vessels that were built between 2020 and 2022.
It had four LR1 tankers early this year but is left with three after selling the STX-built 70,681-dwt Energy Champion (built 2005) to Turkey’s Bek Shipmanagement in March for $19m. The product carrier has been renamed Beks Lily.
DH Shipbuilding was previously known as Daehan Shipbuilding and was under the control of the state-owned Korea Development Bank (KDB). Daehan filed for bankruptcy restructuring in 2009 when the shipbuilding market collapsed.
The shipyard was taken over by merger-and-acquisition specialist KH Investment, the owner of K Shipbuilding — the former STX Offshore & Shipbuilding — in September 2022. KH Investment paid KDB about $200m for its stake of around 90%.
Shipbuilding sources said DH inked a total of four suezmax tanker newbuildings this year — two from Golden Energy and two from Advantage Tankers.
Last month, Belgium’s Euronav was reported to have ordered two more suezmax tankers at the South Korean shipyard, but one shipbuilding insider said the deal is “not yet inked”.
“They [DH and Euronav] are still in discussions over these two newbuildings but we think they are closed to signing the contract … these two vessels are option units that the buyer held at the shipyard when it ordered two vessels last year.”
