![COLUMN | Arrested development: Mexican-connected ships in the firing line for arrest and detention [Offshore Accounts]](http://media.assettype.com/bairdmaritime%2F2026-09-14%2Fs1eqlr3t%2FUntitled-November-24-2025-at-09.11.06-1.jpeg?w=480&auto=format%2Ccompress&fit=max)
Last week, we looked at the basket case that is Venezuela, a country where decades of corruption, brutal dictatorship and chronic mismanagement have led to falling oil production, decaying infrastructure and economic collapse.
Following the kidnapping of former President Nicolas Maduro and his wife in January to face charges in New York, the country has now opened up to new investments from two American companies, including Chevron.
There is also a key role for a Barbados-headquartered company in which the American Government claims to hold a direct 35 per cent stake, North American Blue Energy Partners, which says it has a deal to develop 65 billion barrels of proven oil reserves in Venezuela.
The understandable focus on Venezuela means that the problems of Mexico’s oil sector are overlooked. Mexican state oil company Pemex is a heavily indebted, over-staffed and extremely corrupt bureaucracy, with a dreadful operational record. Despite the partial liberalisation of the sector and the entry of Eni and Woodside into offshore operatorship, Pemex remains the largest charterer of boats and rigs, and the largest producer of oil and gas in Mexico.
We reported on Saturday how there is yet another spill in the Gulf of Mexico from a leaking Pemex pipeline (alarmingly, Pemex appears not to know from which pipeline and where exactly the spill emanated…).
According to former Pemex chief Adrian Lajous Vargas, quoted from 2018 on GEM, "Corruption is everywhere in all areas and at all levels of the hierarchy... Organised crime has moved into the logistical activities of Pemex."
In 2004, Mexico was producing 3.3 million barrels of crude oil per day. Last year, it produced only 1.8 million, the lowest level in more than forty years. At the end of 2025, Pemex’s total debt was reported at US$84.5 billion, the lowest level in 11 years and a significant decline from over the total liabilities of over US$100 billion in prior years. Unfortunately, in order to pay down the debt, Pemex imposed a cash crunch on contractors in 2025, which led to the company delaying payments to its suppliers, including both rig owners and supply boat owners.
This has led to Mexican-owned vessels fanning out across the world, seeking work elsewhere. It has also led to financial stress on Mexican offshore companies, and an alarming number of arrests involving vessels connected to Mexican entities.
A reader kicked off my interest in this problem by highlighting the arrest of the dive support vessel (DSV) Southern Nova in Melbourne in July, whilst on charter to construction company DeepOcean. The 2010-built ship is equipped for both saturation and air diving operations, with facilities including a 12-man ABS-classed saturation diving system, two air dive stations, and work-class and inspection-class ROVs. Southern Nova also has a 100-ton AHC crane, 630 square metres of clear steel back deck, a 116-metre mezzanine deck with passive roll reduction tanks, and accommodation for 128 passengers and crew plus three client offices.
With recent sales in the ICBC auctions of 2014-built Bourbon Evolution 800 series subsea vessels topping US$60 million for the most recent ship sold (BE 806), this is a category of vessel that should be in strong demand, where valuations have surged in recent months. Unfortunately, the arrest means that value is being destroyed for Southern Nova, as the ship cannot work, bills pile up and legal fees mount.
You can access the court filings relating to the arrest in Australia, but the reasons for the arrest and the arrest order are not posted on the Federal Courts website, unfortunately, nor the affidavits from the arresting party. The vessel remains detained at the time of writing, and the crew on board has been reduced to minimum safe manning.
The DP2 ship seems to have been arrested by Fesco Ship Management in Hong Kong (could this entity be connected to the Russian ship owner Fesco? I have no idea), but the basis of the claim underlying the arrest is not clear.
However, there seems to be a connection to HF Offshore, a Mexican owner involved in other arrest cases. The registered owner of the vessel is (surprise) a British Virgin Islands-registered company named Velkyns as per Gard P&I, whilst other online documents give the correspondence address for the owner as being in Mexico, care of the former Harren & Partner officers in Cuidad del Carmen.
We understand that the vessel was previously owned by Mexican owner ENAV, which had acquired the fleet of distressed Singaporean owner Pacific Radiance in 2021, and started to sell off its 33-vessel fleet piece by piece, before selling the final ten vessels en bloc for US$200 million to Abu Dhabi-based Safeen, part of the AD Ports Group, in 2023.
The DSVs were disposed of by ENAV early in the breakup process. ENAV sold the ship and its sister vessel to German private equity firm Harren and Partner in 2022. At the time, the vessel was named Crest Odyssey 1, and it was then renamed Fire Opal when Harren purchased it, before being chartered by Shelf Subsea in 2025. The vessel was renamed Southern Nova in line with the "Southern" prefix then used by Shelf, before Shelf itself was then acquired by DeepOcean in 2025, as we reported.
In 2024, Captain Heiko Felderhoff acquired Harren and Partners’ offshore businesses in Mexico as part of a management buy-out from the Harren Group and modestly renamed the company HF Offshore.
You can see the assets involved in the 2023 Harren Mexico presentation here. As Managing Director of HF Offshore since its foundation, Captain Felderhoff now continues to manage the business under his own complete direction, as per the company’s website.
The sister vessel Trapiche Emerald (the former Crest Odyssey 2, also built in 2010) was also bought by Harren, and seems to have also been sold as part of the HF Offshore transaction. This vessel was also detained in Malta in December 2024 after a port state inspection that found 11 deficiencies as per the Paris MOU website.
Additionally, crew wages were unpaid at the same time, with over US$296,000 outstanding on January 3, 2025. Trapiche Emerald was then flying the flag of Liberia, and 31 crewmembers, including two Mexicans, were legally abandoned by the owners on board in the Port of Valletta due to non-payment of their salaries. The problem had begun from November 2024 onwards, although salary delays started in September, the crew reported, with the owners claiming to the crew that they had not been paid charter hire.
As of January 15, 2025, after more than two months without payment, the ship was classified as abandoned. Looking at the MaltaShipPhotos.com snaps of the vessel when it arrived in the Grand Harbour, Trapiche Emerald seems to have been in dreadful poor cosmetic condition, and a special survey would have been due in 2025.
Finally, in February 2025 all the crew were repatriated and paid their outstanding wages. As per the ILO report on the case, the Maritime Labour Convention insurance kicked in and paid the outstanding dues, as should be the case.
What happened next is not clear in the public record. The ship was reflagged to that well known “open registry” Sierra Leone in February and was permitted to sail from Malta. However, On October 24, 2025, the ship re-entered Valletta at 07:42 local time and berthed at Boiler Wharf. Trapiche Emerald was then subject to another port state inspection three days later, which (surprise!) found 23 deficiencies, and so the ship was again detained.
The vessel left Valletta for good on February 7 of this year heading for Pula, Croatia, where she is today. She was renamed Emerald when she sailed, and is seemingly owned by Italian construction company Micoperi, as per Gard’s excellent online data.
It is not just the two former Pacific Radiance DSVs that have been arrested from the HF Offshore-connected fleet, however.
Several other vessels have been arrested in Africa, but by Atlantic Oceanic, not Fesco, due to a case involving a cancelled charter of Atlantic’s 1983-built multi-purpose vessel Atlantic Tonjer (former Normand Tonjer) in Mexico.
Atlantic took HF Offshore Services Mexico Sapi De CV to arbitration in London in 2024 claiming charter hire and other sums alleged to be due under the charterparty up to the date of termination, totalling US$463,643.92, additional hire in respect of the remaining two months of the firm charter period for the sum of US$3,294,000, a demobilisation fee of US$1,100,000 for the vessel, plus damages for wrongful detention and yet more damages for misrepresentation.
You can read the entire case here. Atlantic Oceanic won the arbitration and also sought recovery of its costs. The London Arbitration Tribunal ordered HF Offshore Services Mexico to pay over US$10 Million to Atlantic Oceanic, including interest, and cited fraudulent conduct (as per the Atlantic post here). Readers will no doubt be shocked to discover such allegations involving a Mexican offshore company.
Of course, Atlantic was not paid. This then led to Atlantic attempting to arrest HF Offfshore’s vessels elsewhere in the world to enforce the arbitration award.
Atlantic was successful in arresting the 2005-built DSV Sapphire (former Bibby and then Rever Sapphire) in Lagos last year, and has managed to get the arrest to stick. Surprisingly, the usually slothful Nigerian courts seem to have acted quickly, and the process to sell the vessel has advanced.
We understand that the ship may be auctioned in the coming months once the Nigerian court procedure approves a judicial auction, whereby the vessel is sold to recover the arrest costs and any crew wages as the highest priority, and then the debt owed to Atlantic. Unfortunately, a year of arrest means the costs will be high, the condition of the vessel may have deteriorated, and as a 2005-built vessel, the market value will be lower.
So, Atlantic also sought to move on the HF Offshore owned, Mexican-flagged 1998-built anchor handler Titan, in Ivory Coast (former Strilborg). This nominally 180-ton bollard pull vessel was detained briefly in Abidjan port last year, but an Ivorian court threw out the arrest and permitted the ship to continue its charter with Eni in-country. One of the great ironies of this is that the end user of Atlantic Tonjer in Mexico, which ended the charter early and caused the dispute between Atlantic and HF, was in fact Eni Mexico, as per the arbitration award.
Clearly, if Atlantic does not succeed in recovering all its funds from the sale of Sapphire (if and when that judicial sale happens in Nigeria) then the company will likely seek the arrest of other HF Offshore assets, unless HF can reach a settlement. This likely throws a lot of uncertainty onto seafarers serving on HF vessels, on charterers and suppliers.
It is not just the HF Offshore fleet which has faced legal difficulties. The Mexican flagged, 2008-built, 60 ton bollard pull anchor hander Akali Akbal (former Swiber Ada, another vessel originally built for another bankrupt Singaporean owner), was detained in Angola following a port state control inspection at Porto de Luanda on July 10 of this year, and reportedly crew wages have also been unpaid or late paid there.
The ILO website shows that over three months' wages were due to the 14 Mexican crew on board the vessel last month, and that the crew were overdue relief by 235 days. As per the ILO, the Mexican Secretariat of the Navy and the Secretariat of Labor and Social Welfare are coordinating efforts to resolve the abandonment.
Lovers of the British comedy series Monty Python's Flying Circus will recall the famous Dead Parrot Sketch and the claim that the immobile parrot was not dead, just resting.
Another company facing issues has been Green Parrot Marine, a company whose CEO and founder is none other than Diego A. Aguilar, the same CEO and co-founder of ENAV, which sold the Pacific Radiance fleet to Safeen for US$200 million in 2023, and the two DSVs to Harren.
Having flogged the fleet to Safeen from his old company, S. Aguilar then bareboat chartered at least two of the vessels back, including the 2014-built, DP2 workboat Safeen Athena 2 (former Crest Athena 2) via his new company, Green Parrot Marine.
On social media, Green Parrot was quick to claim that it had achieved a conversion of the vessel in “record time at our Cádiz facilities” transitioning from accommodation vessel to high-spec walk-to-work unit by removing the 64-ton crane and installing an Ampelmann gangway in 2025.
The project, “reflects Green Parrot Marine’s engineering capability and execution discipline," Green Parrot boasted. "On schedule. On specification. To the highest industry standards."
The vessel then mobilised to Brazil, but its charter appears not to have been a success. Now it seems that Green Parrot has maybe squawked its last and is perhaps resting its Linkedin updates.
Flash forward to last month and the ship was detained in the Cape Verde Isles by the flag state because Green Parrot or its managers had not paid the crew. The ILO Website shows that the 26 Mexican crewmembers onboard the Marshall Islands-flagged vessel were owed outstanding wages of US$338,285 and had not been paid for five months.
It is understood that the walk-to-work gangway owner is also owed large sums. The International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) noted that, “some crew left the vessel by their own means as the company failed to send them home and to pay their wages.”
The vessel has now sailed back to Cadiz, and there has been a change of managers, so presumably the crew have been paid, and we hope the repatriation costs of those who paid their own way home have also been settled.
The ILO notes that The West of England Ship Owners Mutual Insurance Association MLC insurance cover was in place. We understand that the ship is now under the direct control of Safeen, rather than Green Parrot.
There are a number of common themes that run across these Mexican misfortunes, and not just that Mexican counterparties are to be approached with caution.
1. Firstly, records on arrests and detentions are diffuse and scattered, which makes it hard for seafarers, suppliers and charterers to make informed decisions on the quality of their employers, customers and contractors.
Maybe Tradewinds or Lloyds List will pick up an arrest, maybe they won’t. It is a lottery on what is reported in the trade press or the local press where the arrest occurs.
If you search for “Sapphire arrest Lagos,” you won’t find coverage of the arrest of HF Offshore’s dive vessel Sapphire by Atlantic. At least I couldn’t. Instead, you will find lurid headlines about the FBI arresting someone named Sapphire, who is described as a “Nigerian tech queen,” over (surprise) an alleged multi-million dollar fraud.
It would be better if flag states and port states were obliged to publish arrests more visibly so that seafarers looking at joining vessels under the same ownership could be more aware of the risks of joining a ship owned by an entity where tonnage has been seized. Arrests are often like cockroaches – if you see one, you can be suspicious that others may follow.
2. The quality of information on the reasons for arrests available in the public domain is poor and often non-existent. This is why my comments on the arrest of Southern Nova are vague and tentative. The disclosure by the Australian federal courts – like the courts in other major maritime jurisdictions – is poor.
If a ship is arrested, the reasons for the arrest should be easily accessible and publicly available online. This enables informed decision making.
3. The ILO and the ITF do sterling work reporting on unpaid wages and ship abandonment cases and should be credited. The MLC insurance against abandonment appears to be effective in the cases we looked at here.
4. The use of shell companies and offshore tax havens, open registries and flags of convenience obtained through brass plate companies means that the ultimate beneficial ownership (UBO) of vessels is often impossible to fathom. By UBO, that is who is the ultimate owner of a ship, not a faceless trust in Majuro or a paper company in the Cayman Islands or Liberia.
The IMO should mandate that flag states should make the identity of the UBOs of shipping companies publicly visible and searchable. This would not only resolve issues of the "dark fleet" of shadow tankers, it would also help to identify related party vessels to arrested ships.
When vessels are arrested by creditors or detained by port or flag states, often the crew are the biggest losers, with late or unpaid wages, delayed repatriation and unnecessary stress.
Making more information about arrests visible in the public domain would provide a transparency that is sorely lacking at present. Arrests are often like Mexican standoffs, an impasse, or deadlock from which no party involved can emerge victorious. Having better information can help third parties avoid being caught up in these expensive and lengthy legal processes.
Background reading
The best source of information for the global DSV fleet is DSV Fleet Intelligence – JMc² a site created by experienced subsea commercial director Jon McCarthy.
