Danish shipowner Celsius Tankers has turned its focus to China as it shops for valuable berths. TradeWinds’ Lucy Hine and Irene Ang reported that the company is looking to book 10 to 12 LNG carriers newbuildings as it seeks to expand its fleet.

Two Chinese yards have been involved in discussions so far amid a dearth of space in South Korean shipyards. Yangzijiang Shipbuilding and China Merchants Heavy Industry have been trying to break into the LNG carrier sector lately.

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Meanwhile, amid the flurry of sanctions imposed on Russia’s state-linked assets by the West, tanker owner Sovcomflot has been reshuffling its fleet between managers, jurisdictions and classification societies.

Management of its 87 vessels has shifted to its Dubai-based subsidiary Sun Ship Management, TradeWinds’ Matt Coyne discovered. That company was previously known as SCF Management Services (Dubai) until July, a subsidiary of SCF Overseas Holding.

Life is getting tougher for container shipping newcomers, as evidenced by SFL Corp rescinding a charter with UK-based freight forwarder Allseas Shipping. The ship in question has since been chartered out to a Dubai and Hong Kong-based firm for less than half the rate.

Shipping companies and insurers have their work cut out for them when it comes to getting to grips with the upcoming oil price cap on Russian cargoes, according to a New York-based maritime lawyer. The US Treasury Department recently published guidelines for what shipping companies must do to stay compliant, and the level of complexity prompted the lawyer to label the rules as the “most complex sanctions regime” he had ever seen.

Using nuclear as a viable means of fuelling ships is not as far-fetched as it sounds, at least if the growing number of industry stakeholders showing interest in it is anything to go by.

Dorian LPG chief executive John Hadjipateras, for example, reckons that nuclear should be in the mix when it comes to finding a solution to cutting the industry’s greenhouse gas emissions. He has backed his views with hard cash in the form of an investment in UK firm Core Power, which is working to bring molten salt reactors to shipping.