COLUMN | Quick updates, part two of two: S&P action for anchor handlers and PSVs [Offshore Accounts]

After taking a macro-view of the oil price and OPEC+ shenanigans earlier in the week, we now move to a more granular look at the state of the market for platform supply vessels (PSVs) and anchor handling tug supply vessels (AHTS).

One of the few joys in my life, apart from receiving mail from grateful readers, is perusing my monthly copy of Seabreeze, the market report and newsletter of Seabrokers, the offshore supply vessel brokerage.

Four weeks ago, we highlighted that market uncertainty would lead to this year being dominated by “the God of small deals,” rather than the big fleetwide transactions that characterised the 2002 to 2024 period.

That period was when Tidewater was playing Pac-Man and private equity houses and banks were exiting companies like ENAV and Vroon Offshore, whilst entrepreneurs in the Middle East sold Atlantic Navigation, Allianz Marine of Abu Dhabi and Astro Offshore.

The latest Seabreeze has a wealth of sale and purchase details to confirm our thesis.

There were twelve offshore vessels reported sold in Seabreeze, plus the large subsea, 2014-built, 250-ton active heave-compensated (AHC) crane vessel Sea1 Spearfish sold by Sea1 Offshore for a US$40 million profit to Boskalis.

Sea1 Offshore has a four-vessel newbuilding subsea programme costing over US$400 million in total, so selling an older ship to raise cash and pay down debt is logical. Boskalis is a serial acquirer of second-hand subsea vessels and recently reported a record profit of over US$800 million for 2024.

Most of the deals closed in April, split between eight separate transactions, plus the delivery of a 120-tonne AHTS for Rawabi in Saudi Arabia, Rawabi 73. I wish that company would publish its financials.

There was also one firm order and three options for newbuild 65-metre long, DP2 battery-hybrid standby vessels at Jiangmen Hangtong Shipbuilding in China from Sentinel Marine in Aberdeen, now owned by Singapore’s Cyan Renewables private equity fund.

I was surprised by the high number of deals announced, as the oil price has been weakening to around US$60 and the future is not as bright and clear as it has been since the spike in oil and gas prices when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

But so many voluntary willing buyer/willing seller sales is a positive sign.

Seacor keeps selling

Many of the buyers and sellers are familiar and have been active in other deals recently, too. Having sold its last AHTS vessels to P&O Maritime and Britoil, Seacor Marine has now also disposed of two PSVs. Will there be anything left of the company if it carries on like this?

But nobody ever went bust selling older vessels for good profits in a recovering market. Kudos to John Gellert, Seacor’s CEO. Seacor has a new orderbook of PSVs in China and a fleet of large high-capacity, battery-hybrid PSVs in service, so disposing of the older and smaller vessels as “non-core” makes sense.

Abu Dhabi state-owned ADNOC Logistics and Services (ADNOC L&S) bought the duo of 473-square-metre clear deck space US-built PSVs Seacor Courageous and Seacor Fearless. The vessels have now been imaginatively renamed ADNOC S06 and S07.

The continued expansion of ADNOC L&S is a depressing reminder of the dominance of state companies across the oilfield service industry in the Arabian Gulf. When the oil company owns its own drilling rigs and supply vessels, and also construction vessels, in the case of Abu Dhabi, there’s less space for private enterprise and competition.

In 2021, we characterised this trend as “Do it yourself, Gulf-style.”

P&O keeps buying

Hot on the heels of buying Seacor’s Norman F McCall anchor handler through its Repasa partnership, Seabrokers reported that P&O Maritime Logistics struck again. At the end of April the Dubai government-owned company bought the 2013-built, 65-tonne bollard pull AHTS Icon Azra from the Lianson Fleet Group in Malaysia (formerly Icon Offshore) for US$6.9 million.

Renamed as P&O Katara , the ship has already sailed from Singapore and is en route to the UAE as I write. Quite why the owner of a relatively modern fleet of higher capacity vessels would buy a DP1 ship with 1,300 DWT was not clear to me, until I read on the CEO’s Linkedin page that P&O intends to upgrade the ship for maintenance work with a large-capacity crane and a mezzanine deck against a long-term charter in Qatar.

POSH flip-flops

Having spent most of 2024 selling vessels, including several anchor handlers and PSVs, Singaporean owner POSH has re-entered the market through its POSH Semco towage subsidiary to acquire the United Offshore Support (UOS) managed 200-tonner GH Endeavour (built in 2010). It has renamed the vessel POSH Courage.

One step forward with the acquisition after two steps back with the sales in terms of fleet strategy.

For UOS, this continues the shrinkage of its fleet since its private equity owners tried and failed to sell the company in 2023.

In 2021, the Icelandic Coast Guard bought another of UOS’ 200-tonne AHTS, the 2010-built, GH Endurance, which was renamed Freyja by the coast guard. The purchase price then was reported as just over ISK1.7 billion (then US$13 million).

The price for the latest UOS sale was not disclosed, sadly.

Greeks go Giant, too

But GH Endurance was not the only large anchor handler to change hands in April. Having reported on Greek owner Southpoint exiting the industry by selling its fleet of AHTS, Greek salvage compatriot Megatugs has now acquired the aged AHTS Atlantic Osprey from another perennially shrinking player, Canadian owner Atlantic Towing.

Renamed as Giant, the ship promptly relocated to Greece and will be the largest and most powerful fleet in Megatugs’ salvage and emergency response fleet.

The ship is one of the last of its series still in service in Europe, after Gulfmark scrapped its AHTS of the venerable design in the downturn, and Bourbon sold its examples to Russian-connected owners and to Star Matrix. Giant is effectively leaving the offshore industry, further reducing the pool of large AHTS, a segment with a zero orderbook.

Atlantic Osprey was originally built by Halifax Shipyard in Canada in 2003 and has a bollard pull of 181 tonnes on 12,000kW main engines. The specification sheet is still available on the website of the former managers Aurora Offshore here.

More PSV deals

Six other PSVs were reported sold by Seabrokers along with one AHTS. Again, they tell us a lot about the relative strength of the different regions in the industry.

One PSV transaction was Havila Holding of Norway buying the 2014-built Polarsyssel from compatriot Fafnir for continued emergency response and coastal patrol duties for the Governor of Svalbard island in Arctic Norway.

Havila has been responsible managing the ship since 2015 and agreed to purchase it from Fafnir against a five-year extension to the Svalbard contract, which was recently awarded for the full years 2026 to 2030.

The Arctic is a major geopolitical flashpoint, and it is interesting to see Norway re-chartering a modern DP PSV against wide research, enforcement and coastal protection remit. Like POSH, Havila has been a serial seller of vessels through its Havila Supply arm before this purchase, so it marks a turnaround.

Posidonia courts Petrobras

Following on from the acquisition of two PSVs from Brazilian shipyard Estaleiro São Miguel in 2023, as we reported, Brazilian shipowner Posidonia Shipping bought the large 1000m2 clear deck Island Commander from Island Offshore in Norway.

Island sold the smaller PSV 2013-built Island Dragon last year and has adopted the Seacor-like approach of systematically selling its older and lower-specification vessels.

Seabrokers reported that the 2009-built PSV has already been renamed as Posidonia Lion, and is currently sailing from Norway to Brazil.

Posidonia Lion was built in Norway and will be a perfect candidate for the current wave of Petrobras tenders, which require 4,500DWT DP2 PSVs under the Brazilian flag. The ship is 93 metres long and has a deadweight of 4,790.

As we saw in floating accommodation, Petrobras’ aggressive production expansion plans are fuelling demand for vessels across all categories. The current national flag fleet is nearly fully engaged so we can expect more new purchases arriving in Rio as activity ramps up.

Mexican misery leads to Cotemar sale

As Brazil rises, so Mexico falls. And Mexican shipowners are really feeling the pain.

With its main customer Pemex reporting US$100 billion of financial debt and now US$20 billion of unpaid supplier invoices at the end of March, along with a stonking US$2 billion loss, it was not surprising to read that Mexican accommodation player Cotemar had sold four of its PSVs and one AHTS.

No prices were disclosed and several of the vessels were laid up in Belize, apparently.

The sale leaves Cotemar focused on floating accommodation units (the very specialised market we covered last week) and larger crane vessels, and is an illustration of the squeeze that companies in Mexico face as crisis-ridden Pemex suspends rigs and racks up huge debts due to cashflow issues.

The 2001-built Saturno with 600 square metres of clear deck has been sold to Sea Shipping and renamed MS Saturn. The vessel is currently at Ulstein Shipyard in Norway for conversion with a new accommodation module to meet SPS 50-compliant passenger accommodation and the installation of a 20-tonne AHC crane.

Sea Shipping operates a fleet of five similar vessels high passenger capacity and AHC cranes painted with a distinct yellow hull livery, performing project work such as ROV support, IMR, UXO removal, and surveying.

The biggest buyer though was Indian’s Alphard Marine, a relatively new entrant to offshore, which was in the news for all the wrong reasons last year, when its 2006-built AHTS AM Pride suffered a fire in the galley off Mossel Bay, South Africa. This led to the entire crew abandoning ship and the vessel requiring an emergency tow to safety and extensive repairs.

This incident seems to have dampened interest in the sale of the fleet as a whole.

Now Alphard’s dramatic fleet expansion has seen it buy four vessels from Cotemar, the 78-metre long, 785-square-metre clear deck DP sister PSVs Atlas and Olimpo, along with the 2008-built, 70-metre long, 50-passenger PSV Tauro, and one AHTS, Orion I, which is a DP1 (again, why?!) unit of 60 tonnes bollard pull built in 2008.

It is not clear where Alphard and its commercial partner All Energies (former Petro Services) will be marketing the vessels, although Nigeria has been a popular destination for other Alphard ships.

However, it is safe to say it is highly unlikely that they will be chartered in Mexico, where Pemex’s US$20 billion of unpaid invoices act as a salutary reminder that in the oil and gas business, it is not enough to win a contract and do the work well.

You still need to get paid.

Background reading

The Economist has this excellent article on the global shipbuilding industry, reporting that, "in the late 2000s, South Korea and Japan together produced roughly half of global merchant-fleet tonnage, according to Clarksons, a shipping consultancy, with China accounting for around a third. By last year, these proportions had more or less inverted.”

The article also observes that since the announcement of tariffs by President Donald Trump and punitive port call levies on Chinese-built ships, “the share prices of Hanwha and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries…, are up by around 10 per cent since Mr Trump fired his reciprocal broadside on April 2. That of HD Hyundai Heavy Industries, Hanwha’s bigger South Korean competitor, has increased by nearly 40 per cent... Investors are souring on Chinese shipbuilders. The third-largest of these, the Singapore-listed Yangzijiang, has lost a quarter of its value this year.”

With Cyan and Seacor again ordering offshore vessels in China, it is safe to say that China’s hold on the PSV and AHTS newbuild orderbook, small as it is, remains strong. The Jones Act already means that few foreign-built offshore support vessels make US port calls, so the impact of the large port fees imposed on Chinese-built vessels by President Trump will be negligible for the sector.