“Accidental (minor?) grounding…”
02/02/2023
“Accidental (minor?) grounding…”
A New York-listed MR tanker owner posted a sizeable loss in the first quarter of 2022, mainly because of the accidental grounding of one of their tankers and the consequent loss of her earnings for more than 40 days.
The loss of income for such a long period, combined with higher operational costs, lower average rates and higher bunker costs hit the overall performance of the company.
Immediately after the grounding the ship underwent the customary inspections, and then continued to the repair yard in Greece for permanent repairs.
This is a typical example of how an apparently not serious event evolves in the wrong direction.
To make things more “sensitive”, the owning company is stock listed, hence it’s not only the ship owner’s interests that are affected, but also the interests of all shareholders.
A mainstream H&M policy will reimburse the owner for the costs of repairs, in excess of the agreed deductibles, and if the owner had mainstream LoH he would have recovered the earnings from day 15 onwards.
"If a primary delay cover was in place as well, the losses would have stopped at day 4!"
Let’s hope they did… it would have made many shareholders’ day!