![COLUMN | No big deal: Aurora and DOF; Golden Energy, Bourbon and ICBC; Astro purchase and Adani investigation; fate of dark fleet officers (part one of two [Offshore Accounts]](http://media.assettype.com/bairdmaritime%2F2026-02-23%2Fi2zijiax%2FUntitled.jpeg?w=480&auto=format%2Ccompress&fit=max)
Last week, we looked at the biggest drilling deal a decade, as Transocean agreed to acquire Valaris and its fleet of 48 rigs, including 15 high specification deepwater units, 31 jackups, and two benign water semisubs, in an all-stock deal.
For offshore support vessels, however, as we predicted a year ago, the sector is overseen by the God of Small Deals, at least until Tidewater can finally close the transformative deal in the Americas that it needs to push its shares back over US$100, at which point the company’s management will likely exercise all their share options and sell all the stock they acquired in the US$40s, and the whole cycle will start again.
I don’t give investment advice, but watching when a company’s managers buy and sell shares is often an important signal. Tidewater’s management have an uncanny ability to buy their company’s stock at lows and sell it at highs. Watch and learn.
For some, this was a month of small deals. For others, it was simply no big deal, as we shall see.
A few hours after this piece was written, Tidewater issued a press release announcing its all-cash acquisition of Wilson Sons Ultratug Offshore, the vessel operating joint venture formed by Brazilian towage company Wilson Sons and Chile's Ultramar. We will review this deal in next week's column.
Much has happened in the 18 months since Norway’s DOF agreed to buy Maersk Supply Service in July 2024. Around 200 of the former Maersk crew have been fired to save money, notwithstanding the fact that DOF reported fleet utilisation of 87 per cent in the final three months of 2025, and very strong cash flow from operations of US$249 million in that 92 day period.
The Maersk Supply Service and DOF combination created one of the largest owners of anchor handling towing supply (AHTS) vessels of 200 tons bollard pull or more in the world, with the newly enlarged company owning 25 such vessels.
Since the take-over, the market for anchor handlers in the North Sea has demonstrated the power of consolidation on pricing. Fewer players mean higher prices, as Transocean is betting with its Valaris acquisition. The consolidation of Viking Supply Ships into Sea1 Offshore and the merger of Maersk Supply Service and DOF has concentrated ownership in the North Sea.
As a result, stagnant platform supply vessel (PSV) spot rates have been divergent from booming anchor handling rates. As per brokerage SSY’s figures, February AHTS spot rates in the UK sector are at an average of £116,500 (US$157,000) per day.
DOF has spent the last 18 months “high-grading” its AHTS fleet. It has systematically sold off smaller and older vessels, taking a US$4 million profit on the sale of the 2002-build Skandi Handler (former Maersk Handler) to French owners in the fourth quarter, and US$12 million on the sale of two former Maersk AHTS of 175 tons bollard pull to Seacontractors of the Netherlands, which renamed them Sea Banckert and Sea Evertsen.
Last week, in addition to its bumper profits, the company announced the sale of the 2010-built, 250 tons bollard pull Skandi Laser (former Maersk Laser) to unnamed buyers, again resulting in a one-off profit from the sale of the ship estimated at US$12 million. Crucially, the company will retain management of the ship, enabling it to enforce pricing discipline on the vessel, which has been trading on the spot market and is currently sailing for Algeciras in Spain.
At the same time, DOF has acquired the 2011-built AHTS Aurora Saltfjord and Aurora Sandefjord, of around 400 tonnes bollard pull, as we reported last Thursday. DOF reported, confusingly, that the “net investment for these transactions is approximately US$100 million.”
This implies that the delta between the sale proceeds from Laser and the cost of buying the two Aurora-managed vessels is US$100 million, creating an interesting maths puzzle. By my unverified guesstimate, the company likely acquired the two bigger vessels for around US$65 million each and sold Skandi Laser for US$30 million.
The two vessels had been acquired by Aurora Offshore’s parent Borealis’ from Japan’s K Line in December 2021 just before the oil price spiked and offshore went mental when Russia attacked Ukraine (our coverage of the acquisition is here).
The pricing for the K Line fleet of the four STX PSV 06 design PSVs KL Brevikfjord, KL Barentsfjord, KL Brisfjord, and KL Brofjord to REM Offshore and the two large AHTS to Borealis was estimated at around US$100 million in total at the time. So, Borealis traded the ships very profitably for just over four years and, by my estimate, probably doubled its money on the estimated US$30 million per ship it paid for the two AHTS from the disastrously badly timed sale by K Line.
Nobody got poor by selling for a massive profit, so kudos to Christoph Toepfer, Borealis’ Founder and CEO. K Line did get poor from selling too soon, as the company wrote off US$150 million when it sold the six ships.
Now DOF can reap the rewards of a more concentrated market. Seabrokers has reported that over the last 12 months, there has been, “an exodus of AHTS vessels from the North Sea, with seven units heading to Brazil for long-term contracts with Petrobras, and several more heading to Australia, Canada and West Africa for long-term contracts.
Multiple vessels have also been relocated for project scopes in the Mediterranean and West Africa over the last few months, while several units have been tied up for lengthy shipyard "visits," which pushed spot rates to over US$200,000, a level I anticipate to be breached again this year.
The PSV market in January was invigorated by Golden Energy Offshore's sale of the PX121 design, 2019-built Energy Empress for US$30 million and the 2016-built PX121 Energy Partner for US$27.25 million (our coverage here).
Both ships were apparently sold to Turkish interests to support state oil company TPAO’s expanded deepwater drilling operations after the acquisition of the drillships Dorado and Draco last year. Golden Energy booked a handsome one-off profit from the sale.
This is positive for the North Sea PSV spot market, taking out two units permanently to a non-competitive player.
That was not the only pair of PSVs sold in recent weeks, however. The online auctions of the vessels owned by Chinese lender ICBC continue to grind on. Four Bourbon AHTS of 80 tons bollard pull each will be put up for sale via Shipbid.net in March preceded by the subsea vessel Bourbon Evolution 805, which is due for sale on Friday, February 27.
At the start of February, the two 2011-built, 440DWT, PX105 design PSVs Bourbon Clear and Bourbon Front were sold for their reserve price of US$19 million each to (we believe) Bourbon itself as the only bidder, following in the footsteps of sister vessel Bourbon Calm, which the French company also bought back in auction in December, and promptly placed into a five-year term charter as a chemical carrier for ExxonMobil in Guyana.
The third vessel to sell in February was a surprise. We had expected Bourbon to be the buyer of the 2014-built, 100-metre LOA subsea ship Bourbon Evolution 807 in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. Instead, there was only one bidder, it seems, who picked up the ship for the bargain, reserve price of US$35 million, well below my estimate that such a ship in class and operational would command a price of US$50 million. We understand that the winning bidder was Astro Offshore of the UAE, part of the Adani Group.
It was a successful deal for Astro. Meanwhile its parent company, the Adani Group of India, has decided that criticism is no big deal.
A quick search through the pages of our favourite investigative website into malfeasance, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, reveals 416 results for Adani, a rather large number for a group that has always maintained its innocence in the face of criticism.
And, of course, we should stress that the multi-billion dollar conglomerate has always denied wrongdoing in the multiple cases where it has been criticised by investigative reporters, short sellers, national prosecutors, research analysts, and business rivals.
Indeed, the ultimate owners of Astro’s parent company have strongly denied the bribery allegations made by American prosecutors in November 2024 in a criminal indictment in New York, calling them "baseless" and stating that “all possible legal recourse will be sought.” As per OCCRP coverage:
“The New York court charged Adani CEO Gautam Adani, his nephew Sagar Adani, and six other executives with bribery, securities fraud, wire fraud, and other conspiracies related to solar energy contracts.
"Prosecutors allege the defendants bribed Indian officials to secure contracts with the Solar Energy Corporation of India, which purchased solar-generated energy from the Adani Group and another company. Gautam Adani is accused of personally meeting a high-ranking official in Andhra Pradesh between August and November 2021 as part of the scheme.
"The indictment claims the Adani Group concealed the US$250 million bribery scheme from US investors and failed to disclose that it was under investigation by the FBI. Even when reports of the probe surfaced in March 2024, the conglomerate denied any knowledge.”
Since then, surprise, Reuters reported in October last year that, “Indian authorities have not yet acted on [American] requests to serve summons and complaints to Adani executives over alleged securities fraud and a US$265 million bribery scheme.”
The Securities and Exchange Commission, “will continue communicating with the India Ministry of Law and Justice and pursuing service of the defendants via the Hague Service Convention," court filings showed.
We should stress that no one in Astro is implicated in the allegations against its parent company, which occurred before Adani bought 80 per cent of the UAE-based offshore support vessel player for US$185 million in August 2024, just before the bombshell revelations in New York.
Last week, OCCRP reporters were back with more news on Adani, outlining how, when the Indian conglomerate faced allegations of market manipulation in early 2023, two men who had close ties to the Adani family, including appearing as directors in affiliated companies, secretly held billions of dollars of Adani stock.
This came in the wake of Hindenburg Research publishing a devastating report that presented evidence that the, “US$218 billion Indian conglomerate the Adani Group has engaged in a brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud scheme over the course of decades.”
Adani denied wrongdoing and published a lengthy rebuttal saying Hindenburg was attacking India. Adani then rebutted claims of stock manipulation saying that it was part of a conspiracy funded by Jewish financier George Soros and the perfidious foreign media.
In light of the Indian Ministry of Law and Justice’s failure to serve summons on the Adani bosses accused of corruption in the US, it is worthwhile revisiting Hindenburg’s probably entirely unconnected observation:
“[We had] uncovered evidence of brazen accounting fraud, stock manipulation and money laundering at Adani, taking place over the course of decades. Adani has pulled off this gargantuan feat with the help of enablers in government and a cottage industry of international companies that facilitate these activities.
"These issues of corruption permeate multiple layers of government. According to numerous sources we spoke with, Indian securities regulator SEBI seems more inclined to protect the perpetrators than punish them…”
Strange that, and of course, we imply no wrongdoing by Indian Government officials in any of the matters.
Last week, more information came to light to support criticism of Adani’s public disclosures and transparency. OCCRP and its partners The Financial Times and The Guardian reported that according to an internal report from the Swiss finance house Fideuram Intesa Sanpaolo Private Banking, in 2022, half-a-year before the Hindenburg report was published, Swiss judicial authorities had sent specific information requests to a branch of a Swiss private bank about accounts held in the UAE by two men with close ties to the Adani family and the Adani Group.
Subsequently, the bank submitted suspicious transaction reports to the Swiss Financial Intelligence Unit relating to both men, as well as to Vinod Adani himself. Vinod Adani has been a resident of Dubai since 1994 and is a citizen of Cyprus (surprise), as per his Wikipedia page.
OCCRP revealed that the Swiss Federal Prosecutor's Office is still investigating whether there is actually a scheme to enable Adani insiders to own a larger share of its stock than is permitted by law — which is what previous reporting by OCCRP and the Financial Times had alleged. In connection with the case, OCCRP says that Swiss prosecutors have frozen US$311 million held by one of the alleged frontmen in five bank accounts.
Of course, it is probably no big deal, Adani has consistently denied the claims and no criminal charges have been levied in Switzerland, whilst the charges in the USA remain pending due to the mysteriously slow service of the justice authorities there. How can they be taking so long?
In the meantime, under the control of the wealthy Indian conglomerate, Astro Offshore has doubled the size of its fleet to over 50 vessels.
