Hanwha's First Supertanker Sailed Under Vitol's Fleet Name The Week Gulf To China Ran At $423,434 A Day
Elandra is Vitol's fleet name and the ship's technical manager is Vitol's own. She sailed in ballast, no charter reported. Fearnleys put a year at $115,000.
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Hanwha Shipping took delivery of its first supertanker last week and sent her to sea carrying somebody else’s name. Hanwha Ocean built her as hull 5519. Hanwha Shipping owns her through a single ship company, HS VLCC NO 1 LLC, and she flies the Marshall Islands flag. That much is the standard structure for internationally traded supertanker tonnage. And she sailed as the Elandra K2. Elandra is the fleet name of Vitol, the largest independent oil trader in the world, and the ship's technical manager is LSC Shipmanagement, which Vitol International Shipping describes on its own website as its “in-house technical management subsidiary”. No filing announced any of this. The ship’s name did.
Her delivery, her name and her first voyage have not been reported anywhere. Not in the trade press, not on the wires and not in any Hanwha press release. There is no earlier trace of her either: a full text search of 15 broker weeklies covering weeks 28 to 31 finds nothing under this name or under the yard's.
What exists instead is a naming ceremony, a hull number and a public statement from the company itself. James JY Lee, Hanwha Shipping's Chief Strategy Officer, said publicly, under his own name, that hulls 5519, 5520 and 5521 were named on July 30 and that the Elandra K2, hull 5519, was welcomed into the fleet the following day. He thanked Hanwha Ocean for the build. Then he thanked what he described as collaboration in charter and finance, naming five parties: Vitol, Korea Development Bank, Suhyup Bank, KB Kookmin Bank and Crédit Agricole CIB.
Four of those five are banks. One is not.
The databases corroborate the hull number without anybody’s help. MarineTraffic still lists IMO 1107908 under the yard name Hanwha Ocean 5519, with a status of Launched, while MyShipTracking and vesseltracker now carry her as Elandra K2. LSC’s own fleet page carries her as Elandra K2, IMO 1107908, Marshall Islands flag, callsign V7B2830, built 2026 by Hanwha Ocean, 331 metres by 60. She left the builder's yard at Okpo on August 1 and was logged out of Busan anchorage at 14:02 UTC that night, 11 at night in Korea. The trackers do not agree on how deep she is running. One carries her at 10.6 metres, the other at 8.6. Her technical manager gives her maximum draught as 20.5 metres, so on either figure she is nowhere near laden. Her last position report, at 17:07 UTC on Monday, put her in the East China Sea about a hundred miles off Taiwan, making 12.5 knots on a course of 206 degrees. That is the road to Singapore. One tracker carries her Busan to Singapore with an arrival on August 9. Another still shows the sea trial string the yard left in the destination box, above an estimated arrival that has already passed. Even her own broadcast has not caught up with her.
She sailed empty into one of the strongest crude tanker markets ever assessed. The Baltic Exchange put the round trip time charter equivalent on the Middle East Gulf to China route at $423,434 a day for the week ending July 31, the last figure published before she left. Period cover in the same window was assessed at a fraction of it. Fearnleys had one year at $115,000 on July 29 and Alibra at $107,500 the same day. The week before, Banchero Costa had it at $115,000 and Intermodal at $118,500. Intermodal had three years at $73,500 in that week and Alibra $75,000 on July 29. Five years, on the same Alibra sheet, at $55,000.
A shipowner reads those numbers and sees a choice. A trader reads them and sees a hedge. Only one of them is standing behind this ship, and the paperwork does not say which.
📋 In This Issue:
⚖️ The Story:
What the name answers, what the registry will not tell you, why no filing names this hull, what the period curve is telling both sides, what Vitol actually does with period tonnage and what cannot be established at all
📊 By The Numbers:
The spread the ship sailed into and the orderbook behind her
🔍 Why It Matters:
What changes for the owner, the trader, the charterer, the lender, the broker and the equity investor
👀 What To Watch:
Six signals, including the one that would disprove this entirely
🚨 Gosships Signal:
Why a ship’s name is a disclosure
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April 2024: Hanwha Ocean establishes Hanwha Shipping, a Houston based shipowning arm, described by Splash247 as “a testbed and validation platform for new ship technologies” (Splash247, February 12, 2025)
February 12, 2025: Hanwha Ocean books two 174,000 cubic metre LNG carriers worth about $504 million for its own shipowning subsidiary, delivery by end September 2027 (Splash247 and Riviera, February 12, 2025)
July 9, 2025: Hanwha Shipping is reported to have taken a third VLCC at Okpo for mid 2027, on top of two already under construction for 2026 delivery. No order date and no price were disclosed for the first two. Hanwha Shipping’s own fleet page today shows all three VLCCs delivering between the third quarter of 2026 and the first quarter of 2027 (Splash247, July 9, 2025; Hanwha Shipping fleet page, accessed August 3, 2026)
October 14, 2025: China’s Ministry of Commerce bars five Hanwha Ocean United States units from transactions and cooperation, Hanwha Shipping LLC among them. China suspends the measures on November 10, 2025 (Marine Log and CNBC, October 2025; Xinhua, November 10, 2025)
April 2, 2026: James Sagar becomes Chief Executive Officer of Hanwha Shipping, succeeding Ryan Lynch (Hanwha Shipping announcement, April 2, 2026; Seoul Economic Daily, April 3, 2026)
July 15, 2026: Hanwha Ocean discloses a KRW 394.3 billion contract, about $264.9 million, for two VLCCs to a North America region shipowner, delivery by March 2030. Shipbuilding sources link the buyer to JPMorgan’s maritime platform (Seoul Economic Daily, July 15, 2026; Splash247, July 16, 2026)
July 27, 2026: Hanwha Ocean posts second quarter operating profit of KRW 736.1 billion, up 98 percent year on year, and a first half operating profit of KRW 1.1772 trillion, above one trillion won for the first time (Seoul Economic Daily and The Elec, July 27, 2026)
July 30, 2026: Hulls 5519, 5520 and 5521 are named, according to a public statement by Hanwha Shipping's Chief Strategy Officer James JY Lee (James JY Lee, LinkedIn, July 31, 2026)
July 31, 2026: Lee states that hull 5519 was welcomed into the fleet as the Elandra K2. For the week ending that day the Baltic Exchange assesses the Middle East Gulf to China round trip time charter equivalent at $423,434 a day (Baltic Exchange tanker report, week 31)
August 1, 2026: The Elandra K2 leaves Hanwha Ocean's Okpo yard and is logged out of Busan anchorage at 14:02 UTC on a ballast draught, carried at 10.6 metres by one tracker and 8.6 by another. One gives her destination as Singapore with an arrival on August 9, while another still shows the sea trial string the yard left in the box. Her last position report, at 17:07 UTC on August 3, puts her in the East China Sea about a hundred miles off Taiwan, making 12.5 knots on a course of 206 degrees (AIS via VesselFinder and MyShipTracking, accessed August 3, 2026)
Sources: LSC Shipmanagement fleet page for Elandra K2, accessed August 3, 2026; Vitol International Shipping corporate site; AIS position, voyage, registry and ownership data via VesselFinder, MyShipTracking, vesseltracker, MarineTraffic and MagicPort, accessed August 3, 2026; James JY Lee, Chief Strategy Officer, Hanwha Shipping, LinkedIn post of July 31, 2026; Hanwha Shipping fleet and management pages, accessed August 3, 2026; Baltic Exchange tanker reports weeks 30 and 31, 2026; Fearnleys Weekly Report week 31, 2026; Banchero Costa Weekly Market Report week 30, 2026; Intermodal Weekly Market Report week 30, 2026; Alibra Shipping weekly tanker time charter estimates, July 29, 2026; Xclusiv Shipbrokers weekly report, July 13, 2026; Lloyd's List Intelligence Strait of Hormuz Brief, July 29, 2026; Tasnim, Iran International and The Washington Times on the Revolutionary Guard's July 31, 2026 claim to have struck two tankers; UKMTO via Euronews and GlobalSecurity on two further reported attacks near the Strait, August 1, 2026; Seatrade Maritime on a cargo ship struck inside the Strait, August 3, 2026; DHT Holdings business update, July 13, 2026 and revolving credit facility announcement, June 4, 2026; DHT Holdings newbuilding announcement, February 28, 2024; Offshore Energy and Baird Maritime on the deliveries of the DHT Antelope and the DHT Addax, 2026; Hanwha Ocean Korea Exchange contract disclosures, February 2024 to July 2026, as reported by Kyunghyang Shinmun, EBN, Etoday, Digital Times and Seoul Economic Daily; TradeWinds reports on Vitol period chartering, October 15, 2025, May 19 and June 22, 2026, the 2026 reports read as headlines and standfirsts only; Splash247 on Hanwha Shipping, February 12 and July 9, 2025; Offshore Energy on Elandra Tankers, May 30, 2018; Splash247 on the Bahri purchase, November 16, 2022; ChosunBiz via Hellenic Shipping News on Hanwha Philly Shipyard, August 3, 2026.
⚖️ The Story
Nearly every serious shipping story this year has been about who is ordering. Two hundred and ninety-one VLCCs on order is the number the trade repeats, and the trade repeats it because it frightens people. Almost nobody is writing about who ends up employing the ships once they exist. That is the part that decides who gets paid.
This ship answers the question on her stern, which is where it was always going to be answered first.
The Name Is The Disclosure
Elandra is not a coincidence and it is not a manager’s whim. It is a fleet identity with a documented owner behind it. Offshore Energy reported in May 2018 that Elandra Tankers, a Singapore joint venture between Vitol and a unit of Standard Chartered, had ordered four 300,000 dwt VLCCs at Hyundai Heavy Industries. Those four sailed as Elandra Everest, Elandra Kilimanjaro, Elandra Denali and Elandra Elbrus. Bahri bought two of them in 2022 at $112 million each.
The naming convention survived the fleet. More than 20 Elandra vessels sit today on the managed fleet list of LSC Shipmanagement in Riga, and the crude tanker sub series runs on mountains. Everest, Kilimanjaro, Denali, Elbrus. Now K2.
LSC is not an arm’s length manager. Vitol International Shipping’s own website says it manages a fleet of over 40 tankers “through our in-house technical management subsidiary, LSC SIA”. One ship in that managed fleet shows what the arrangement looks like in the registry. The Elandra Cedar, a 50,469 dwt oil and chemical tanker delivered from Yangzijiang in 2025 and flagged in the Marshall Islands, is recorded against a Singapore owning company called Elandra Cedar Pte Ltd, registered at Vitol International Shipping’s own Singapore address. LSC SIA is her ISM manager and Vitol International Shipping is her commercial manager.
The Elandra K2 breaks that pattern in two places. MagicPort's record for her gives the registered owner as HS VLCC NO 1 LLC, a single ship company carrying a care of address at Hanwha Ocean's Geoje yard, and it puts the commercial manager down as Hanwha Ocean rather than Vitol. Read one way, the record still points home to the group that owns her, because the commercial line names a Hanwha company and the initials fit Hanwha Shipping exactly. Read the other way, the record has not caught up, because a care of address at the builder's yard with the builder in the commercial box is exactly what a database carries for a ship delivered at the end of last week. The same caution applies to the aggregator still calling her Hanwha Ocean 5519. The name and the manager are not in doubt. They are the two fields nobody keys in by accident.
This is not a Vitol ship. It is Hanwha's ship, wearing Vitol's name, in Vitol's manager's fleet. No shipowner puts a trading house's fleet identity on its own first supertanker by accident.
What The Registry Will Not Tell You
The delivery itself is corroborated. The date is not.
Not for want of looking. Equasis needs a login. The Marshall Islands registry, ABS Record and the DNV vessel register all refused automated queries. Balticshipping’s database is offline. IHS, Clarksons and VesselsValue are subscription products. One free aggregator still carries this IMO number under the yard name outright, with a status of Launched. A second has switched its headline record to Elandra K2 while its vessel particulars still read Hanwha Ocean 5519. The stale entry is a lagging record, not a contradiction.
The ship is real and so is the IMO number. The databases still carrying her under the yard name corroborate the hull number. Her technical manager's own website confirms the new name and independent position sources confirm the movement. What rests on one man is the exact date, the naming of the three hulls and the list of parties he thanked for the charter and the finance. That man is the Chief Strategy Officer of the company that owns her, speaking publicly under his own name about his own ship. It is a company statement in everything but format. It is not a registry entry, and nothing here pretends otherwise.
Why No Filing Names This Hull
No Korea Exchange disclosure anywhere names Hanwha Ocean hull 5519. The reason looks structural, not secretive.
Hanwha Ocean discloses single contracts when they clear a threshold set against revenue, and on VLCCs it names its buyers only by region. Every VLCC contract it has disclosed since February 2024 covers two ships or more. Two ships in February 2024 at KRW 342.0 billion. Two in April 2025 at KRW 378.4 billion. Two more that July at KRW 353.6 billion. Four in November 2025 at KRW 757.7 billion. Then, through this year: three in January at KRW 572.2 billion, three in March at KRW 588.7 billion, two in April at KRW 393.3 billion and four in June at KRW 800.1 billion. The most recent VLCC filing, on July 15, was two more at KRW 394.3 billion.
Run those to a per ship figure and the series tells its own story, though not a tidy one. KRW 171.0 billion a ship in February 2024. KRW 189.2 billion in April 2025, then back down to KRW 176.8 billion three months later. From there it climbs without a break: KRW 189.4 billion in November, KRW 190.7 billion in January, KRW 196.2 billion in March, KRW 196.7 billion in April and a peak of KRW 200.0 billion in June, before easing to KRW 197.2 billion in July. First to last is a gain of about 15 percent in the yard’s own currency. In dollars the same move looks far smaller, roughly $129 million to $132.5 million, because the won weakened across the period. Anyone reading VLCC prices in dollars alone has been reading a flatter market than the yard has actually been selling into.
One disclosure fits this ship closely enough to have to be dealt with. The February 2024 pair went to an Oceania region shipowner, one ship for delivery in each half of 2026, and hull 5519 arrived inside that window. But on February 28, 2024, five days after that filing went up, DHT Holdings announced that it had ordered four VLCCs, two of them at Hanwha Ocean and two at Hyundai Samho, at an average of $128.5 million across the four, for delivery between April and December 2026. The count at Hanwha, the yard and the timing all match. Both Hanwha ships have since been handed over, the DHT Antelope on January 2 and the DHT Addax on March 6. Both dates run ahead of DHT's own announced window, and both fall in the first half of 2026, where the Korean filing set out one ship in each half. Delivery schedules move between contract and handover. The rest of the fit does not. The region label cannot separate the two candidates on its own, because nothing on the public record establishes where Hanwha's own owning company is incorporated. DHT's announcement can. On the balance of the evidence, that filing is DHT’s, and hull 5519 is not in it.
That leaves the orders too small to file, and a gap the threshold does not fully close. A single VLCC at these levels does not clear the threshold. Every publicly known single ship VLCC contract at this yard surfaced outside the filings, through a broker report or the buyer's own announcement. No filing names Hanwha Shipping as the buyer of a VLCC, though the yard did disclose the two LNG carriers it booked for that same subsidiary in February 2025. Every VLCC filing identifies its buyer by region alone, so whether the three tankers were contracted singly and fell below the threshold, or sit inside a disclosed grouping behind a region label, is not on the public record. Either way the money behind this ship never had to be published, and it was not.
One correction for anyone working from the filings. Hanwha Ocean’s buyer region labels track where the owning company is incorporated rather than where the owner lives. Maran Tankers, a Greek owner, files as an Africa region buyer because its vehicles are Liberian. DHT, run from Norway and Bermuda, files as Oceania because it is Marshall Islands incorporated. Anyone reading an Oceania region shipowner as an Australasian company has misread the filing. The rule cuts the other way too. July's pair filed as North America region. The label points at an owning company incorporated in North America, not in the Marshall Islands or Liberia where the others sit. How a buyer incorporates is itself a signal about how it is put together.
The Curve Both Sides Are Staring At
The numbers are in the lede. Set them out in order and look at what they draw. Spot at $423,434. One year at $107,500 to $115,000. Three years at $73,500 to $75,000. Five years at $55,000.
