Shandong Shipping Corp (SDSC) has quietly become a VLCC owner through a specially structured sale-and-leaseback of three Euronav tankers.
The trio could be followed by a fourth sistership.
TradeWinds reported last week that Belgian tanker major Euronav had offloaded the 11-year-old ships in a deal with Shanghai-based ship finance joint venture Taiping & Sinopec Financial Leasing (TSFL).
New York-listed and Brussels-listed Euronav sold the Dalian Shipbuilding-built, 307,300-dwt sisterships Nautica, Nectar and Noble (all built 2008) for some $126m and chartered them back for a total of 54 months at an average rate of $20,681 per day.
