There is a febrile feel about the newbuilding and sale-and-purchase sectors and it is not exactly pretty.

Shipowners have been jumping on shipyard space and competing aggressively for secondhand vessels as they look to splash the cash reserves they have built up, renew their fleets, and make decarbonisation efforts.

In the past few weeks, enigmatic Norwegian investor Kjell Inge Rokke apparently opted to drop a pair of 2027 VLCC newbuilding berths priced in the region of $127m to $128m and two optional slots that his interests had lined up at South Korea’s Hanwha Ocean.