Severe conditions in the tanker market pulled Russian shipowner Sovcomflot into the red for the first nine months of 2017.

The state-backed company logged a bottom line loss of $6.8m in the year to the end of September, swinging from a profit of $218.1m at the same stage in 2016.

Sergey Frank, chief executive of the company, said: “This year has proven to be a very challenging period for the tanker industry and the situation now faced by many conventional tanker shipowners is especially severe.