DNB Bank has signed the cheque which will support the addition of the 299,000-dwt Gulf Eyadah (ex- Front Shanghai, built 2006) and Gulf Sheba (built 2007).
DNB was one of two lenders involved in payment disputes with the tankers’ former owner, Gulf Navigation which saw the ships arrested and intimately sold. BNP Paribas was the other bank in dispute with Gulf Nav.
According to an SEC filing from DHT, the new loan is split into two tranches.
The first will carry interest at 325 basis points plus LIBOR and run until March 2019. The second will carry interest at 450 basis points plus LIBOR and will mature in May 2014, the filing says.
Existing clients
DNB is one of the three banks DHT is working with at present. Its main lender was previously RBS, but it has also worked with DVB , its last quarterly update revealed.
TradeWinds was first to uncover the identity of the latest additions to the DHT fleet, with both the buyer and the seller Gulf Navigation since confirming the VLCCs involved.
DHT paid a combined $98m for the Gulf Nav vessels, which were previously linked with former Ocean Tankers head Michael Ioannides and Anders Wilhelmsen.
As TradeWinds has reported, Wilhelmsen lost interest in the Gulf Nav VLCCs because of the complex purchase process that would have been involved.
