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Tankers – Asahi, MOL pull out of CPTA to form new pool: sources

Japan’s Asahi Tanker Co and Mitsui OSK Lines have walked out of the Clean Product Tankers Alliance, or CPTA, a pool of four companies and formed another of their own to cater to the demand of Medium Range, or MR, ships in the East of Suez region, market participants said Tuesday.

The pool has already started operations with immediate effect, they said.

Asahi and MOL have signed a contract to establish a pool operation company, Asahi MOL Tankers, and will launch new MRs, which will be assigned to the new pool, they added.

The move is significant because earlier the two companies had assigned their MRs to CPTA, which also has Ultranav International, or Ultratank, and International Seaways as members.

With less than an year left for the new global stringent regulations on sulfur in marine fuels to come into effect, shipowners worldwide are planning strategies to optimize their voyages as there will be incremental demand to move marine gasoil oil, sources said.

The departure of MOL and Asahi Tanker implies that CPTA, which at one point had around 60 MRs in its pool, will now consist of a much smaller fleet of around 20 ships.

“We want to focus more on the business in the East of Suez region,” an MOL executive said.

CPTA will continue as it still has ships from Ultratank and International Seaways, the executive said. They are expected to do more business in the West of Suez region, he said.

The CPTA pool was directly managed by Products Tankers Management Company, or PTMC, an affiliated company of Ultranav, and MOL Product Tankers Ltd., or MOLPT, a wholly-owned subsidiary of MOL.

The MOL wants to meet its customer needs with a more efficient ship allocation, the company said in a statement Monday, announcing the setting up of the new pool with Asahi.

The pool will own a fleet of about 25 MR ships and allocate them mainly to Asia and Oceania from the three centers of Tokyo, Singapore, and London, it said.

The MRs are product tankers in the range of 45,000-55,000 dwt and mostly carry cargoes of up to 40,000 mt.

The new pool will pull out ships from CPTA one by one as most of them are still undertaking a voyage, sources said.

However, the new pool has already started operating and, in one of its fixtures, placed an MR ship on subjects for loading early next month on the Japan-Australia route, they said.
Source: Platts

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