Oslo-listed BW Energy has made a final investment decision for the Golfinho Boost project, aiming to increase incremental oil production from 2027 by 3,000 barrels per day.

According to the company, the project will also increase uptime and reduce operating expenses at the Golfinho field offshore Brazil.

The project includes multiple measures aimed at boosting production efficiency and increasing recoverable reserves by approximately 12m barrels.

The measures include upgrades to the subsea boosting system by replacing gas lift with electrical submersible pumps at the seabed, reopening of shut-in wells, umbilicals replacement, improved field logistics and FPSO capacity enhancements. The total investment budget is $107m. 

“The planned low-risk enhancements to field assets and operations offer very attractive returns and are expected to help unlock material long-term value creation for the company and its stakeholders,” said Carl K. Arnet, CEO of BW Energy.

The Golfinho field is in the Espírito Santo Basin, with water depths between 800 and 1,700m. BW Energy is the operator with 100% working interest in the Golfinho license following the August 2023 acquisition of the Golfinho and Camarupim clusters.

Hydrocarbons are produced to the FPSO Cidade de Vitória, which BW Energy acquired and has operated since November 2023. The field has been producing since 2007.

The government of Lithuania is undertaking preparatory work to relaunch a tender for the development of a 700MW offshore wind project in the Baltic Sea.

The tender was suspended in January to ensure that the impact on final electricity prices was minimised. The tender was launched for the second time in November 2024 after its first iteration failed to attract enough proposals.

Now, the Baltic country has revealed that it would be relaunching the tender. The decision to go ahead came after the country’s government approved amendments to the terms of the tender that include indexing the transaction price for eight years from the date of confirmation of the tender winner, rather than the 23 years in the previous tender conditions.

This is expected to help reduce the need for support by around €500m ($570m). The tender will be considered valid if at least two participants take part. The changes will now be considered by the parliament.

The final decision is expected to be made during April or at the beginning of May after parliament gives its thumbs up. If everything goes as planned, the relaunch could be expected at the beginning of June.

Lithuanian energy minister Zygimantas Vaiciunas invited developers to actively bid in this upcoming contract for difference auction with a ceiling of €125 ($138.5) per MWh.

The country’s first offshore wind tender was won by Lithuanian utility Ignitis in partnership with Ocean Winds.

Malaysian offshore services player Sapura Energy has won several vessel contracts worth around RM100m ($22.6m) in Malaysia and Thailand.

Sapura Energy will be providing 200-pax-capacity workboats, KPV Redang and Sapura Duyong, for offshore operations in East Malaysia.

The contract for the former began in February and will last for one year, with an optional one-year extension. Meanwhile, the latter started work in March and will end its deal after eight months, with an option to extend for an additional two months.

Furthermore, another 200-pax accommodation workboat Sapura Aman has been chartered for 245 days with a 90-day extension with a Malaysian operator. The Sapura 300 accommodation vessel also won a 30-day charter.

In Thailand, the geosurvey vessel Sapura Wira has been contracted for geotechnical soil boring services at the Rossukon field in the Gulf of Thailand. The contract is expected to be completed in the coming weeks.

Last week, Sapura Energy won a contract for maintenance, construction, and modification services for offshore facilities in Peninsular Malaysia worth around $9m. In February, Sapura Energy revealed a batch of contracts worth $723m. It was also able to secure a $250m bailout from the government to repay debts to vendors in March.

Malaysian OSV owner Keyfield International is expanding into the new offshore services market with the acquisition of a cable-laying barge from Taizhou Sanfu Ship Engineering.

The Kuala Lumpur-based accommodation workboats specialist is paying $22.55m for the 98-m-long vessel named Keyfield Blessing.

The acquisition will be fully funded using Keyfield’s internal funds and closed by the second quarter of 2025, the company said.

The vessel, with a cable load capacity of 7000T, is designed to install subsea power cables linking offshore wind farms to main grids, but it can also be retrofitted to lay telecommunication fibre optic cables.

Keyfield, which currently counts 13 ships in its fleet, has already agreed for the new unit to go on a one-year bareboat charter with a one-year extension option with China’s Dejing Group in a deal worth $9.1m. Dejing will mobilise the vessel for the Farasan submarine cable project in Saudi Arabia.

With delegate passes selling at a rapid clip, and overall participation already up by 26.67% over last year’s inaugural edition, the organisers of Geneva Dry are warning the event is set to be sold out in the coming days.

There are less than 20 tickets left for sale.

This year’s biggest dedicated dry bulk gathering is on track to host more than 800 delegates at the Hotel President Wilson on the shore of Lake Geneva with organisers working with the hotel to reconfigure and enlarge the layout of the event space to accommodate the increased number of visitors to the world’s premier commodities shipping summit, taking place on April 28 and 29.

“The momentum has been phenomenal as the days tick down to the second edition of Geneva Dry. However, there comes a time where we feel very fortunate to be in the position to cut off sales. In a way, there’s no better sign that an event is a success than when an organiser decides to turn away cash,” commented co-founder Sam Chambers, who added that the 2026 edition, also scheduled for April 28 and 29, will cater for up to 1,000 delegates.

Geneva Dry brings together all elements of the commodities shipping sector to host the ultimate dry bulk shipping event.

Split into sectors, panels will bring together analysts, financiers, miners, traders, and shipowners to discuss where the markets are headed. Sessions include:

• Minor Bulks
• Agri-commodities
• Coal
• Iron Ore
• Decarbonisation
• Electric vehicles (EVs)

Based on feedback from delegates to last year’s debut event, the organisers of Geneva Dry have added two specialist workshops to this year’s conference.

On the morning of April 28, delegates will be able to attend both the Crewing In The Digital Age workshop as well as the Risk Management In Dry Bulk session prior to the main conference launching after lunch.

The crewing workshop, sponsored by Inmarsat, is designed to give delegates ideas on how to harness and standardise the digital revolution sweeping through shipping, while the risk management hour, sponsored by Paratus, will offer important insights into fuel price risks, contract and counterparty risk, as well as geopolitical risk.

The full Geneva Dry agenda can be accessed here.
Geneva Dry registration, at just $1,000, can be accessed here.
Special Geneva Dry hotel room rates can be found here.

BW Epic Kosan has promoted its chief commercial officer, Jakob Bode, to the position of CEO, taking over from Charles Maltby at the gas owner.

Andreas Sohmen-Pao, chairman of the board of BW Epic Kosan, said: “We are very grateful to Charles for his dedication and for the successes under his leadership as executive chairman from 2014 to 2019 and as CEO from 2015 until today. We welcome Jakob, who has over 25 years of experience in the gas shipping sector and who has worked closely with Charles for the past four years. Jakob will provide a seamless CEO transition.”

Bode commented: “The company has never been stronger, and we are well-positioned to deliver further value not only in our core LPG and petrochemical sectors but also for the safe transportation of ammonia and CO2.”

Belgian owner Somtrans has been linked to a newbuilding move in the LNG bunker segment.

Brokers have named the Wijnegem-headquartered company behind the most recent order for a 20,000 cu m vessel at China’s Nantong CIMC Sinopacific Offshore & Engineering (CIMC SOE).

The Somers family-run operator of about 25 inland tanker barges should see the newbuild, which would become the largest in its fleet, delivered by April 2027 at an undisclosed price.

Several newbuilding moves in the growing LNG bunkering segment have taken place at yards in China and South Korea as the number of LNG-powered ships is expected to double by the end of the decade from more than 600 at the end of 2024.

The ships range between 7,800 cu m and 20,000 cu m. The gas shipbuilding specialist of CIMC Enric said the order is its fifth for this vessel type, which includes three from the London-based outfit Avenir LNG and one from Singapore bunker supplier Equatorial Marine.

Singapore-based owner Jaldhi Overseas has moved to bolster and renew its chemical tanker fleet with six stainless steel newbuilds from Japan and China.

The shipping arm of India’s Bothra Group has contracted Asakawa Shipbuilding for two 26,000 dwt stainless steel chemical carriers and one 20,000 dwt unit at Fukuoka Shipbuilding.

The vessels delivering in 2027 and 2028 are estimated by shipbuilding sources at more than $48m and about $40m each, respectively.

The company, which currently operates three stainless steel units built between 2000 and 2006, will also be adding a trio of 40,000 dwt newbuildings from Nantong Xiangyu Offshore & Marine Engineering, with delivery set for 2028.

Established in 2004, Jaldhi has in recent years booked multiple newbuilds in addition to the latest chemical tanker series. The company currently sits on a diversified orderbook of post-panamax and ultramax bulkers, MR tankers, as well as LPG and very large ammonia carriers.

Japan’s Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank (SuMi TRUST Bank) has invested in London-based Hayfin Capital Management’s Maritime Yield strategy, bringing total strategy commitments to over $620m across the commingled fund and related separately managed accounts.

The investment is the latest addition to the $400m in capital commitments raised for the fund in 2023 and has taken Hayfin’s total deployment capacity significantly past $1bn when coupled with conservative debt financing.

This latest fundraising round is a further extension of Hayfin’s track record in the maritime sector, having invested in excess of $4bn across various sectors – dry bulk, tankers, containers, LPG, and LNG. The firm has deployed capital into the sector through its private credit strategies, as well as the Maritime Yield strategy, which focuses on building a diversified asset-owning platform.

Andreas Povlsen (pictured), Hayfin’s head of maritime, commented: “Our maritime platform offers exposure to high-quality assets that help underpin global trade flows and is working to drive forward the decarbonisation of the global shipping sector, which is a proposition that increasingly resonates with institutions in Japan and elsewhere around the globe.”

With Donald Trump widely tipped to pass judgement on extra fees for Chinese-linked tonnage calling at US ports in the next couple of days, another wrinkle has emerged that has not been widely discussed in Washington to date. 

Trump’s tariff war against China late last week backtracked as his administration took on advice from the tech sector, who pointed out that global supply chains for the manufacturing of much tech, such as smartphones, inevitably involves some Chinese produced items. Consequently, Trump exempted smartphones, computers and some other electronic devices from reciprocal tariffs last weekend.

Similarly, the Trump administration might have to make concessions when it passes judgement on Chinese tonnage calling at US ports, as many Japanese and Korean yards subcontract much of their construction to China these days. 

Following an investigation into Chinese shipbuilding practices, and with the aim of resuscitating American shipyards, the US Trade Representative has recommended a triple-pronged set of potential fees for Chinese-linked vessels that could have amounted to as much as $3.5m per US port call, something that drew nearly 400 responses, mostly negative, when a public hearing was held last month. Trump is expected to make his ruling on the investigation before the end of this week. 

Appearing in front of a Senate Finance Committee last week, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said his organisation had taken onboard the huge volume of complaints registered during a public hearing into proposals to charge companies with Chinese tonnage on their books extra for port calls in the US.

“They’re not all going to be implemented. They’re not all going to be stacked,” Greer said last week.

Like the tech pullback, Washington might be forced to make concessions as so many shipyard alternatives – such as Tsuneishi and Kawasaki Heavy in Japan and Samsung Heavy Industries in South Korea – have extensive production facilities in China. 

American deliberations on charging more for Chinese-linked tonnage has already seen a shift in ship buying preferences over the past month, both for newbuilds and in the secondhand market.