Whilst we are not a big fan of Vladimir Lenin (obviously), one of his misattributed quotes does have resonance:
“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”
Whilst the Russian revolutionary didn’t actually write that, it captures the madness of this moment in time.
Just two months ago, analysts fretted that oil would plunge below US$50 per barrel, now they boldly state that it could hit US$200. Tanker rates are hitting record highs, whilst surging bunker prices threaten to pour yet more misery onto the embattled container lines (bring me a smaller violin as I listen to this).
As for gas, Fearnleys summarises the situation as, “the Middle East is facing unprecedented turmoil, with conflict disrupting the entire region. Ship insurers have withdrawn coverage, and head owners are refusing to send vessels into or out of the Gulf. As a result, we are witnessing a surge of cancellations, with ships unable to meet their previously fixed laycans. At the same time, no new fixtures or negotiations are taking place…”
But whilst conflict rages, deals are still done in offshore…
Last week, we looked at Tidewater’s US$500 million deal to buy Wilson Sons UltraTug (WSUT) and its fleet of 22 platform supply vessels (PSVs) in Brazil.
Brazilian deals seem like buses (or European states boarding flagless "dark fleet" ships); you wait for ages and suddenly they all happen at once. As per Tidewater’s presentation, the WSUT deal would catapult the American company up the rankings of PSV operators in Brazil, with its combined fleet of 28 ships in-country ranking just under Edison Chouest’s, noting that CMM, Starnav and Couest all have 10-vessel PSV newbuilding programmes.
Just before we went to press, Brazilian rivals CBO (a company Tidewater had considered buying but rejected) and OceanPact announced they were merging in an all-stock transaction. Reading some of the breathless coverage of the deal, the creation of a 73-vessel fleet would seem to be an almighty slap in the face to Tidewater, and a threat.
It’s not.
In 2021, we covered the contrasting fortunes of the two companies. Since 2013, the Brazilian private equity investors who bought CBO have been waiting to exit, buying from the Fischer family of orange juice barons at the top of the market.
OceanPact has been listed in the Brazilian stock exchange for five years now, and the share price went down over the period, after a catastrophic series of profit warnings in 2021 and 2022, which seems unfortunate. It listed at BRL11.15 (US$2.13) in 2021 in a US$225 million dollar placement, and today its shares stand at BRL9.48 (US$1.81). Whoops.
This was due to the fact that, as we commented in 2021, “OceanPact's shareholders, and especially the new investors who bought into the optimistic IPO, have been taught a crash course that Edison Chouest, Bourbon, Tidewater, Solstad and Swire Pacific Offshore could already have told them through their painful experiences in Brazil: winning long-term, large contracts for state-of-the-art marine assets with Petrobras is not necessarily a path to riches.”
Of course, the founders cashed out over US$55 million at the time of the listing, so they did very nicely. The merger actually gives the former CBO shareholders over half of the company, but OceanPact founder Falvio Andrade will be the CEO and the single largest private individual shareholder.
After the deal, the new shareholding structure of the combined deal will be as follows: Vinci Compass, 21.8 per cent (CBO); Patria Infrastucture funds, 21.8 per cent (CBO); Flavio Andrade, 13 per cent; BNDESPar, 10.9 per cent (CBO); OceanPact executives, 3.8 per cent; and free float market, 28.7 per cent.
Even the headline figure of 73 vessels is not comparing like for like.
CBO has a fleet of 45 vessels, but these include three small oil spill response vessels and four small ROV supply vessels with only 200 square metres of clear deck space apiece, so the core fleet is actually only 13 anchor handlers (many of which were acquired from Italian operator Finarge at the depths of the Covid crisis in 2021 for US$95 million), 21 PSVs and two subsea support vessels.
OceanPact has a similarly odd mixed fleet of 10 small oil spill response, boom handling and research vessels, two anchor handlers, seven PSVs, and nine subsea support and ROV support vessels.
I don’t think this deal will be keeping Tidewater’s CEO Quintin Kneen awake at night. At 28 PSVs apiece in Brazil, Tidewater and OceanPact will have similar sized fleets. The merger should allow OceanPact to trim costs in Brazil, if the country’s notoriously inflexible labour laws permit it, and it should allow for higher rates, if the country’s notoriously fickle competition regulator approves the merger without any remedies.
Mr Kneen has another 185 anchor handlers and PSVs working outside Brazil, so Tidewater’s hegemony remains assured for some time to come, as the latest investor presentation makes clear.
One of our all-time favourite headlines from this column was back in 2021, when we covered the public listing of Edda Wind with “Diet teas, influencers, John Fredriksen, Idan Ofer and the Edda Wind IPO” and observed how the Edda Wind IPO resembled the marketing of dubious diet teas on Instagram.
Three cornerstone investors committed to acquire shares for a total amount of NOK465 million (then worth US$53.5 million) in the IPO, being tanker magnate John Fredriksen, Israeli shipping tycoon Idan Ofer, and the considerably less famous Nordea Investment Management.
We noted that when Mr Fredriksen and Mr Ofer were leading the stampede into a hot listing in a sector like wind, what was an ordinary investor to do?
“This is literally how the acronym FOMO [fear of missing out] was coined.”
Five years on, the Edda Wind story is at an end.
Edda Wind’s first day of trading in November 2021 saw its shares trade at just over NOK31 (then worth US$3.00). Despite a large fleet expansion programme, Edda Wind struggled to be profitable, and by mid-2025, the shares were selling for less than half the first day value, at a low of NOK15.10 (US$1.45) on April 4.
Along the way, the company’s founding investor, Østensjø Wind, a wholly owned subsidiary of Norwegian offshore player and tug owner Østensjø, decided to bail, selling 21,300,000 shares in Edda Wind at a price of NOK24.50 (then US$2.36) per share, completely exiting its position in the company.
In December 2024, Edda Wind announced an “organisational update” that its CEO, Kenneth Walland, was leaving his role at very short notice. Then in May 2025, John Fredriksen, Idan Ofer and Wilhelmsen New Energy took the company private, delisting it from the Oslo market after an unconditional and mandatory cash offer to buy all outstanding shares in Edda Wind, at a price around NOK22.99 (then US$2.21) per share.
Last week, they too threw in their hand, as announced by a terse notice on the announcements page of Wilhelmsen’s Oslo stock market listing.
Edda Wind will be sold and broken up, its fleet of service operation vessels (SOVs) and larger commissioning SOVs (CSOVs) (including newbuilds) to be split amongst two buyers: UK’s North Star, owned by the private equity company the Partners Group, and Navigare Capital Partners.
“Completion of the sale is conditional upon inspections being completed and certain conditions precedent being satisfied,” Wilhelmsen advised its investors.
Rather like OceanPact in 2021, North Star has been on a debt-fuelled borrowing binge to grow its fleet, winning term contracts at rates that have surprised other industry players (and not in a good way).
In August last year, RWE agreed to charter two next-generation SOVs, Grampian Eagle and Grampian Kestrel from North Star on 10- and 12-year contracts with extension options. Additionally, RWE signed reservation agreements with North Star for two newbuild vessels designated to support the maintenance of RWE’s offshore wind fleet from 2028 and 2029 onwards.
We remain concerned that inflation and operating cost increases will crush the profitability of these North Star contracts just as they have done for so many others.
Edda Wind currently owns six CSOVs and one SOV, with three more CSOVs on order. It is not clear how the dismembered Edda Wind fleet will be apportioned.
Like North Star, Navigare already has big exposure to wind through its shareholding in Norwind of Alesund, Norway, in which it invested in 2022. Norwind currently owns six CSOVs with a seventh on order for delivery in 2027, and a US$100 million subsea support vessel under construction in Vard’s yard in Vietnam, in which it recently bought out the minority shareholders.
No financial details were given on the price of Edda Wind. With wind back in the doldrums, and tankers sizzling, no wonder Mr Fredriksen has called it quits.
For Navigare and North Star taking out a competitor in a market with a large overhang of newbuilds might at least provide some solace. They have no choice but to double down.
Also doubling down is the Scottish Government.
Everyone loves a sugar daddy; one has only to look at the odious White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt and her geriatric more mature millionaire husband.
In December, we warned that Ferguson Marine, the state-owned shipyard in Scotland at the centre of the decade long “ferry fiasco,” faced an impending crisis. The second ferry in its calamitous programme of delayed new buildings, Glen Rosa, has been delayed by another six months and was further over budget, but after the delivery of the vessel, the yard faced a void.
We wrote:
“The biggest challenge for Ferguson is what happens when the final ferry is delivered. The orderbook of Glen Sannox and Glen Rosa has sustained jobs at Ferguson on the Clyde for a decade, including five different chief executives. When Glen Rosa is delivered (in 2026?), the yard will have to confront a hard truth that its orderbook is empty and the workforce is at risk.
"This is a situation that would be politically inconvenient for the Scottish Government during an election. The fate of the yard is a political time bomb, unless follow-on work can be found…”
A month later, the BBC confirmed that the fresh delays had added another £12.5 million (US$16.8 million) to the bill for Glen Rosa, bringing the total cost of the vessel to a mindblowing £197.5 million (US$265 million).
But never mind, as the Scottish taxpayer was once again on hand to pay for the cost overruns. Once bitten, twice shy, you might think. But no, Scottish Nationalist Party politicians hate the prospect of embarrassing shipyard closures in their core constituency in an election year almost as much as they love expensive motorhomes and corrupt spouses (allegedly).
Last week, the Scottish taxpayer once again came to the aid of Ferguson, as we reported on Friday. By direct award, the Scottish Government, free of those pesky European rules on open tendering for public contracts thanks to Brexit, awarded four new vessel contracts to Ferguson.
The yard will not be funded to construct the replacements for the research vessel Scotia and the fisheries protection vessel Minna for the Marine Directorate, alongside two ferries for its long-suffering long-standing customer CalMac under the next phase of its small vessel replacement programme for ferries to the isles.
The government said the contracts match to the yard’s current capabilities (I am not clear on what these capabilities are, other than charging a fortune for projects that overrun by years) and would take up most of its capacity for the next five years (conveniently past the next election as well…), whilst also, “enabling the yard to pursue additional commercial opportunities.”
Commercial opportunities have so far evaded the yard for a decade now, as commercial customers value on-time and on-budget delivery. Things can only get better, perhaps?
American readers take note, under the new maritime action plan launched last month, you are likely going to find yourself in the same position. The second bullet point of the plan begins with, “use and increase funding for federal credit and grant authorities to lower the financial barriers shipyards and critical suppliers face.”
This is exactly what the Scottish Government has done. We know where this ends.
In Edinburgh, the authorities argued that more state contracts will, "help secure a sustainable future for the yard and strengthen Scottish shipbuilding."
Karoline Leavitt might want to cut and paste those words, appropriately edited, for future use.
Background reading
Our 2022 coverage of the Scottish Ferry Fiasco began here, and other updates can be found here and here.
Our founder Dr Neil Baird wrote this piece last year on The Continuing Case Against Government Ownership of Ferries.