The decline of the offshore industry means that owners have many old OSVs out of operation on their books.
VesselsValue Head of Offshore, Charlie Hockless, mentions:
No one knew the downturn would be so severe, but analysts and market commenters were quick to point to the high number of these older vessels as one of the principle problems with the overall market. During the first years of the downturn (2015-2016), owners resisted the calls to scrap, no doubt thinking of how these vessels were solid earners in previous years.
However, as the downturn was increasing, owner are thinking scrapping these vessels. So far in 2018, 43 OSV vessels have been sold for scrap. In the first three months of 2017 only 17 vessels were sold.
Despite the low scrap value of old OSVs, owners are still optimistic that the restructuring process and a better entity will appear.
A prime example of this being Tidewater, who are unsurprisingly top of the scrapping leaderboard selling 13 vessels for scrap in 2018.
