Hunter Tankers Secures USD 80K Daily Charters for VLCC Trio

Hunter Tankers AS, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Norwegian Hunter Group ASA, has entered into a six-month time charter agreement for three ships obtaining an average daily rate of approximately USD 80,000 per day.

The three ships include 2019-built ECO very large crude carriers Hunter Atla, Hunter Laga and 2020-built VLCC Hunter Freya.

The contract comes at a time when tanker owners are enjoying strong rates reaping the fruits from VLCC rate volatility as a result of the recent announcements on crude oil production boost from Saudi Arabia and Russia.

The strong tanker market has seen rates ranging from USD 65,000 to USD 100,000 for individual contracts, while certain VLCCs secured fixtures for up to USD 410K per day.

Hunter Tankers said that the deal significantly de-risks second and third quarter cash flow. The TCs will commence immediately following completion of current spot voyages.

“Hunter Saga will remain in the spot market through the Tankers International Scrubber Pool, where she will be joined by Hunter Disen in May/June, Hunter Idun in June/July and Hunter Frigg in July/August,” the company added.

Hunter Tankers has four more identical VLCCs under construction at DSME, all to be outfitted with open-loop scrubbers from Wärtsila.

The extraordinarily strong tanker market is being used by Nordic American Tankers (NAT) to buy back its shares.

“The financial position of NAT is solid. NAT has an increasing cash flow. In view of the above main factors, the NAT Board has decided to establish a share buy-back program,” the company said.

The program shall be in place for the next 24 months as of March 19, 2020 and has a scope of up to 4.5 mill NAT shares.