Singapore-based World Tankers Management demanded for months that a non-performing charterer that fixed its tanker Strovolos to store oil off Cambodia remove its cargo from the vessel.

The 47,100-dwt Strovolos (built 1999) was seized by the Indonesian Navy off the island of Batam at the end of July after Cambodian authorities issued an Interpol red alert claiming it stole the country’s crude.

World Tankers Management on Wednesday strongly denied that the tanker and its crew were involved in such an oil heist.

The Polys Haji-Ioannou-linked company said the Strovolos was left with an overdue crew and was almost out of bunkers when its former charterer defaulted. The company claimed it had sailed to the Indonesian island of Batam to carry out a crew change after bunkering in Thailand.

Industry sources in Singapore familiar with the ship’s predicament said World Tankers had asked many times to have the oil removed from the ship after the charterer failed to pay hire.

These sources, together with authorities in Cambodia and Indonesia, named the charterer as Singapore-based independent upstream company KrisEnergy.

TradeWinds’ sister publication Upstream reported in June that KrisEnergy, which had been banking its success on revenues from its Apsara oilfield off Cambodia, ran out of cash after Apsara’s production proved lackluster.

Out of options, KrisEnergy submitted a winding-up petition to the Grand Court of the Cayman Islands on 4 June, with Borelli Walsh in Singapore appointed as liquidators.

Oil stuck aboard

One industry source said the charter payment problems began long before KrisEnergy filed for bankruptcy.

“World Tankers had been screaming for months for KrisEnergy to come and get its oil. It received no response,” the source said.

World Tankers said that after the charter was terminated and the vessel withdrawn from its service, it requested that the owner of the cargo arrange to remove it from the vessel by ship-to-ship transfer at a convenient and practical location, but no agreement was reached to enable this to occur.

The company claimed that the Strovolos left Cambodia purely for operational reasons. It said the ship needed to be refuelled, and the crew needed to be changed out because contracts had expired, and the Cambodian government was kept informed.

That claim did not appease Cheap Suor, director general of petroleum at the Cambodian Ministry of Mines and Energy, who told the AFP newswire service that KrisEnergy “reported to our government that the tanker stole the oil”.

Restructuring advisory company Kroll, into which KrisEnergy’s liquidator Borelli Walsh has been merged, declined to answer TradeWinds’ questions about the demands to remove the cargo, and to whom the cargo on board the vessel belonged.

Indonesia’s navy claimed it was questioning the Bangladeshi master and 18 other seafarers from Bangladesh, India and Myanmar. Officials said the navy arrested the Strovolos both for illegally anchoring without permission — something that World Tankers has vehemently denied — and because of a request from the Cambodian government.

The captain could face up to a year in prison and a $14,000 fine if convicted on maritime violation charges, the navy added.