Polarcus agrees early redelivery of seismic vessel

Marine seismic company Polarcus has agreed an early redelivery option with the charterers of the Vyacheslav Tikhonov vessel, originally named Polarcus Selma.

The Vyacheslav Tikhonov has been on bareboat charter to Russia’s Sovcomflot (SCF) since delivery from yard in 2011. The current charter period will expire in October 2019.

Polarcus said on Thursday that SCF had negotiated an option to redeliver the vessel on no less than 30 days’ notice without penalty provided that the substantive service agreement for the 4D project in the Far East is executed and performed.

Reciprocally, the Polarcus subsidiary owning the vessel has negotiated a call option for redelivery of the vessel on 30 days’ notice.

Earlier this week Polarcus also said that a contract had been executed with Dubai Petroleum for a combined towed streamer and ocean bottom node (OBN) 3D seismic acquisition and processing project in the Middle East.

Due to lack of Polarcus vessel availability, the contract created an opportunity to call on the Vyacheslav Tikhonov to provide the marine seismic acquisition services with project management delivered by Polarcus.

Vyacheslav Tikhonov is an ultra-modern and high ice class 8 streamer vessel suited to 3D XArray exploration requiring cable separations of 160 to 200m. It was built to the ULSTEIN SX133 design and incorporates the ULSTEIN X-BOW hull.

In a separate statement on Friday Polarcus said that its fleet booked capacity for 1Q 2019 is 90%; for 2Q 85%; for 3Q 55%; and, for 4Q 30%.