Scrubber bans from specific states have not shredded the economics of installing the technology on DHT Holdings’ VLCCs, company officials say.

Co-executive Svein Moxnes Harfjeld believes moves by Singapore and other notable regions to prevent the use of open-loop scrubbers close to coast have not taken the company by surprise.

European Commission calls for ‘urgent’ changes to IMO scrubber rules

“Our base case has always been to consume compliant fuel while in ports and in coastal waters,” Harfjeld told investors and analysts on a conference call today.

“For the DHT business case [these bans] do not change anything. This is expected and for many of these states it's politically correct to follow through without necessarily having the scientific base to back up the decision. It does not change anything for us.”

DHT has plans to fit scrubbers on 18 of its 27 VLCCs and will depreciate the cost of the technology from instillation through until 2022.

“The VLCCs are the low hanging fruit from an economic perspective in installing scrubbers,” Harfjeld said. “They are big ships, they are mostly out in the open sea and they consume a lot of fuel.”

The 298,000-dwt DHT Lake and DHT Raven (built 2004) have now been retrofitted with scrubbers.

DHT’s fourth quarter report came as the anti-scrubber movement was boosted by a report from the EU Commission which called for ‘urgent’ changes to IMO rules.

Harfjeld was quizzed on what the growing momentum against the exhaust cleaning equipment could mean.

“From a shipowners’ perspective there are two camps against scrubbers,” he replied.

“The ones who have not got the money to do it and the other camp who came way too late to the party to do this in a credible and realistic fashion well ahead of the 2020 turn-around.”

DHT reported a fourth quarter profit in line with expectations, with an adjusted profit of $19m comparing with the $20m charted on Wall Street.

Trygve Munthe, the company's other co-chief executive, said rates had softened since the start of this year due in part to the delivery of 10 VLCC newbuildings in January and the impact of Opec cuts.

“If we try to look beyond the next few months we are much more bullish,” Munthe said.

He explained scrubber fitting and talk cleaning ahead of IMO 2020 rules would begin to impact the supply of vessels in the second half of 2019.

However, even without the new regulation, he says the tanker market would be on an upward curve.

Munthe said: “Oil demand is growing, fleet growth is slowing, inventories are down and IMO 2020 is coming to town.”