Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement (BSM) has emerged as the party behind last week’s arrest of PDVSA subsidiary Albanave’s 113,000-dwt tanker Arita (built 2015, ex Sorocaima) in Singapore.

Court records indicate that BSM filed an SGD 2.6 million ($1.92m) claim against the tanker covering unpaid bunker bills, crew wages, ship chandler claims, ship repair costs and provision of services.

The arrest came several weeks after BSM, which provided technical management services to the Arita and 14 other ships owned by PDVSA including two VLCCs jointly owned by the oil company and China’s PetroChina, said it would hand back all the tankers as it had become "almost impossible" to work with vessel...