8/13/2025

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

results presentation. We will begin shortly. Aristides Alafouzos, CEO and Herakles Barounis, CFO of Okeanis EcoTankers, will take you through the presentation. And we're pleased to address any questions raised at the end of the call. I would like to advise you that this session is being recorded. Herakles will begin the presentation now.

speaker
Herakles Barounis
CFO, Okeanis EcoTankers

Thank you. Welcome everyone to the presentation of Okeanis EcoTankers results for the second quarter of 2025. We will discuss matters of the forward-looking nature and actual results may differ from the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements. Please read through the relevant disclaimer on slide two. Starting on slide four and the executive summary. I'm pleased to present the highlights of the second quarter of 2025. We achieved fleet-wide time charter equivalent of about $50,500 per vessel per day. Our VLCCs were almost at 50,000. and our series maxes at $51,500. We report adjusted EBITDA of $47.3 million, adjusted net profit of $26.7 million, and adjusted EPS of $0.83. Continuing to deliver on our commitment to distribute value to our shareholders, our board declared the 13th consecutive distribution in the form of a dividend of $0.70 per share. Total distributions over the last four quarters stand at $1.82 per share, or approximately 9% of our earnings for the period. On slide five, we show the detail of our income statement for the quarter and the first half of 2025. TC revenue for the six-month period stood at 113 million. EBITDA was almost 80 million, and reported net income was over 39 million, or $1.23 per share. Moving on to slide six and our balance sheets, we ended the quarter with 65 million of cash, Balance sheet debt was $631 million. Book leverage stands at 57%, while our market-adjusted net LTV, based on the most recent broker values, is around 40%. On slide 7, we go over our main driver behind our operational and commercial performance. That's our fleet. We have a total of 14 vessels, 6 series maxes and 8 VFCCs, with an average age of only 5.9 years. That's the youngest fleet. amongst listed crude tanker piers. All vessels are built in South Korea and Japan, are scrubber-fitted and eco-designed. From a capital expenditure perspective, we're in a very good spot, with only our two 2020 built Suez Maxes scheduled to undergo their five-year dry dock at the end of the third and beginning of the fourth quarter later this year. In 2026, we only have one Suez Max for the entire year. Slide 8. Moving on to our capital structure, in May we announced that we declared the option to purchase back our three Chinese lease vessels, the Nisos Nikurya, Nisos Kea, and Nisos Anafi. The Nisos Nikurya and the Nisos Anafi have been refinanced with a Greek bank at very attractive terms, priced at 140 basis points over software, seven years maturity, and competitive amortization profile. The Nisos Kea has been refinanced with a syndicate of Taiwanese banks led by ESAN, At similarly attractive terms, priced at 135 basis points over SOFR, with seven years maturity and also competitive amortization profile. The Nisos Nikouria and the Nisos Kea transactions closed in June within the second quarter, while the Nisos Anafi closed last week at the beginning of August. With respect to the Nisos Nikouria and the Nisos Kea, we recorded in our second quarter P&L a non-cash, non-recurring write-off of the unamortized portion of the previously recorded modification gain of approximately 1.1 million. This relates to a non-cash modification gain recorded in 2024 under our IFRS accounting policies due to the amendment of the then-applicable terms and reduction of margin negotiated with our financiers. No such modification gain was recorded with the NISO-SANAFE. As such, we do not expect a similar write-off in the third quarter. These recent refinancing transactions underscore the strong confidence our financiers have in Okeanese and the resilient, well-balanced capital structure we have built. They have lowered financing margins by 55 to 60 basis points, extended average maturities by roughly a year and a half per vessel, and further strengthened our cost efficiency. We expect to realize annual interest savings of around $1 million in the first year alone, while reducing our daily cash break even by more than $1,000 per vessel per day. Our loan maturities are now staggered between 2028 and 2032, and we are set to soon turn our attention to declaring and refinancing the last of our legacy leases on the Nisus Vigna and Nisus Despotiko in the first half of next year. If our last transactions are indicative of what we can achieve, buying back these two vessels will present a compelling opportunity to deliver another meaningful improvement in our capital structure, and drive break-even costs even lower. Before passing it on to Aristide, this taking the opportunity, and as we have been going through the highlights of the quarter, since our last call in May, I'm pleased with the further expansion of the universe of equity research coverage on our name. In the spring, the D&B merger with Carnegie closed, effectively getting us covered by the combined team. And recently, we had our second US analyst, Jeff Rees, initiating coverage. As we continue our work to expand our investor base and sell the story of our vision of becoming the public platform of choice within the crude oil tanker space for investors and other stakeholders, these are important milestones within our still young journey in the public capital markets. So thank you to the teams of the new and older analysts and the work that they put. I will now pass the presentation to Aristides for the commercial and market updates.

speaker
Aristides Alafouzos
CEO, Okeanis EcoTankers

Thank you, Akhil. Q2 was a clear improvement from Q1. We had a fleet wide TC climbing over 12,000 per day, quarter on quarter. We had a 100% utilization in both our, in the segments we own on the VLCs and the SWOs Maxes. And I think what made the difference this quarter is how we use the fleet's flexibility to adapt to the market dynamics of that quarter. On the VLCC side, we kept our balance of east and west positions while capitalizing on front-haul voyages from the west to the east to lock in strong earnings. We fixed two vessels to go east on these long-haul voyages which were profitable, and then fixed them after they discharged in the east on, again, profitable westbound backhauls. We fixed another VLCC from Guyana to the Far East at attractive levels. And importantly, we cleaned up another VLCC that loaded diesel in the AG for discharge in Europe at attractive levels. And that gave us a dual benefit of strong earnings on the voyage itself, as well as optimizing back in the West ahead of before. So we put a lot of focus on both fixing ships to come from the West to the East that we positioned to lock in these like strong front haul earnings, but we need to keep bringing ships from the East to the West when we

speaker
Aristides Alafouzos
CEO, Okeanis EcoTankers

find attractive opportunities to keep this fleet balanced. And either we do that with backhauls from West Africa to europe or with the cleanup voyages that we've really successfully been able to do systematically over the past year on the suez max's one Again, we outperformed our VLCCs on a dollar-per-day basis. And we focused heavily on trading in the West, in Europe, in the West Africa and using triangulation and vessel substitution to keep the ships full.

speaker
Aristides Alafouzos
CEO, Okeanis EcoTankers

We felt that the TD3 or local East runs outperformed what we would expect it to earn on a triangulated basis. So we did fix multiple, you know, AG East voyages. Alternatively, when we did find backhaul opportunities for vessels opening the east that earned similar to the TD3 round voyage, we jumped on those fixtures and took them immediately. And that also allowed us, by bringing one ship from east to the west, to fix another ship that we had in the west to come east and lock in good earnings. The benefit also of these longer voyages, fixing east and west and west and east, is that if we do them in July or August, the vessel opens up in Q4. And hopefully this Q4 is a lot longer than last Q4, which is quite disappointing. On our Suez Maxes, Nisosiknos and Nisosiknos have been fixed to go east for their scheduled dry docks, and they've picked up long-haul voyages on the way with minimal ballast. The dry docks are expected to be just below 20 days. As Irakis mentioned, it'll take place in September and October. For the remainder of the fleet, we capitalized on the seasonal market softness by executing short-duration voyages in the west, which we like on the Suez Maxis. We can swap them in, so if a ship is a little bit late or early, we can swap in another ship to optimize ballast and waiting times. And this really gives a big difference to earnings if the voyages are short and you're able to limit these two factors. Now going into September with OPEC now beginning to unwind production cuts, we expect additional barrels to come into the market and this to lead into higher utilization of tankers. We'll come back to this a bit later, but we're quite constructive looking at the market for the next quarter. Moving on to slide 12, we continue to outperform the market and our peers with our modern fleet and very strong chartering team. As we mentioned before, the gap widens when the market turns, as we can use our nimble fleet to position quickly and take advantage of short-term opportunities. I think this is a benefit that having a smaller fleet has that a larger fleet can't do. And it allows us to deliver consistent results above our peers. Moving on to slide 13 and the following slide, we've kept it quite short since it's August to talk about the market. We keep coming back to this slide because it tells one of the most important stories of our segment, that the supply side remains structurally tight, especially on the large vessels. It's not just about age or order book. A large part of the fleet is in the shadow trade. and we believe it's almost impossible for these vessels to return to normal trading and compete with modern and compliant tonnage. Most of the sanctioned tonnage is also over age, meaning at some point even this subsegment will require replacement, and that replacement will have to come from the conventional fleet. This is again positive for compliant vessels like ours. By 2028, more than half of the VLCC and Suez Max fleets will be over 15 years old. Many of them, all of them belonging to the non-EKO generation. Fuel thirsty, less efficient, and increasingly uncompetitive to our modern EKO design fleet. Nearly 30% will have crossed the 20-year mark with only a modest number of new builds scheduled for delivery. This is exactly the kind of market backdrop that would position our vessels as a preferred choice for our charters. Meanwhile, the pace of new orders remains firmly in check despite some recent orders, reinforcing a supply dynamic that we believe will be highly supportive for tanker earnings in the years ahead. Moving on to the final slide, on the overall demand and market dynamics, we continue to see a supportive setup for tankers. With September, Middle East cargo is expected to be released soon. Momentum quickly returns. OPEC plans to fully restore the eight members 2.2 voluntary cuts by September, with about 1.1 million barrels returning in August and September. Moving this extra crude would require roughly 20 VLCCs, or roughly 1.5% of the global tanker fleet, supporting VLCC spotlights. In Guyana, Exxon has started production at Yellowtail, as announced last week. It's fourth offshore development in the Starbrook block, and this is 250,000 barrels per day capacity, lifting the natural output capacity over 900,000 barrels. Brazil also came online and is exporting at the peak numbers as well. While much of this moves on Afromax and Suezmax over shorter distances, it is also a large VLCC trade. The additional volumes still contribute positively to regional flows. Looking ahead to Q4, OPEC is weighing the partial reversal of the 1.6 million barrel reduction cut. Excluding Russia's half a million barrel, bringing back roughly two thirds of the remaining cuts would add about 0.7 million barrels, with Saudi potentially accounting for half a million barrels of that. More supply from the region means more demand for VLCC to move that crude. On the geopolitical front, Trump has reportedly threatened tougher measures on Russia. including higher secondary tariffs on buyers such as India and China, and has agreed to meet with Putin. Separately, the EU will cut the Russian price cap down to $47.6 per barrel in September, which is 15% below the market. And we'll have more regular adjustments to this cap going forward. The outcome of these moves remains to be seen, but could materially shift trade flows, as we've already seen with India. We've seen a material shift of their crude oil purchases and inquiries from the US, Brazil, and West Africa. Just with a small example of our VLCC fleet, multiple vessels in our fleet have either been fixed to India recently or on existing voyages, charters have asked for India discharge options. This shows us that India is diverting a percentage of its crude purchases away from Russia, towards the U.S.-compliant crudes. And we find that this is very supportive of the 10-mile structure. In Iran, closer monitoring of the shadow fleet could curb unsanctioned exports and redirect volumes to the conventional fleet. But we also have the Europeans, you know, threatening snapback measures, which seem to be due by the end of August. So, we'll see if the pressure could return on Iran as well. All of these factors reinforce our constructive outlook for the remainder of the year and beyond. And I'm handing back to you, operator.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press star followed by two. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure your device is unmuted locally. First question comes from Omar Nocta with Jefferies. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

speaker
Omar Nocta
Analyst, Jefferies

Thank you. Hey, guys. Good afternoon. Thanks for the detailed update. As usual, very helpful color. Did have maybe just a couple of market-related questions and maybe just perhaps on the, Aristides, you referenced the VLCC that you cleaned up to trade diesel. Just in general, kind of, could you give maybe an overview of what you think this vessel will do after this voyage? Will it continue in the diesel trade or the clean trade? And is it possible to maybe just give a sense of kind of what the economics look like in terms of the cost of cleaning it and then what you captured in terms of earnings relative to what you could have gotten had it stayed dirty?

speaker
Aristides Alafouzos
CEO, Okeanis EcoTankers

First of all, Omar, again, thank you for taking up coverage. It's nice to hear your voice on our calls as well. We've heard you on so many other calls that It's quite familiar. In terms of your first question on the cleanups, we've been doing it for over a year now, and we've been fixing on a spot basis with two counterparties. We've developed a strong element of trust with the counterparties that we fix with, where we clean up the vessels ourselves and proceed to load the cargoes. so the charter doesn't need to get involved or take the risk to clean up the ships. This gives us a unique ability to be one of the very, very few spot owners who is able to offer their ships for these types of voyages. And we don't see it usually happen by anyone else. Otherwise, it tends to be on a time charter basis where the charter cleans the vessels for the trade. We have tried to fix the vessels once they've opened up after discharging in Europe with clean cargo for clean business, whether it's a U.S. Gulf to Europe or some kind of voyage similar, but we've never been able to. So I can say with 99% certainty that the ship will end up loading a crude cargo, either from the U.S. Gulf, maybe from the North Sea, maybe from Malta, but she'll load a crude cargo and go east. Um, now on your, on the second part of the question about the economics. So what we look at is two things. I mean, if the clean market is really strong and we can, and TD three, for example, makes 40,000 just to open in China, load an AG and come back to China makes 40,000 and we can earn 40,000 to go clean up in the AG, load the diesel and come to the West. For us, that makes absolute sense because the next voyage will earn $60,000 or $70,000 when you load in the U.S. Gulf, and the average will be far higher than whatever you earn in the AG. If the backhaul voyage doesn't earn as much as TD3, then we start looking at what the averages of a backhaul voyage plus a fronthaul voyage would make. versus what a TD3 run would make plus one or two more TD3 runs at what the paper curve is pricing or what are expectations for the market. And if we think that the triangulated basis outperforms, we would choose that option. In general, the triangulation has worked very well for us over the past three years. We've established our relationships with the backhaul players and with the fronthaul players. and it's something we like, but we're not fixed on it. So in Q2 and Q3, we fixed three, four, five voyages for local AG East runs when we found that it was more profitable to do that. Thank you.

speaker
Omar Nocta
Analyst, Jefferies

Thank you. Again, very detailed. I appreciate you giving that overview. Okay, and then maybe just one follow-up just in terms of OPEC and You mentioned CSMAX has obviously done better than what you are guiding, and we're seeing rates doing decently here recently. I guess maybe just big picture as we think about these OPEC barrels, there's been a lot of talk and a lot of, you know, expectations of this production increase. And it looks like what's being produced now sort of outpaces the typical, you know, summer cooling consumption in the region. And so it seems that we should be seeing some of these barrels actually hit the export markets fairly soon. And just from your vantage point, are you seeing any of that? Are you seeing any incremental cargos coming out of the Middle East as a result of these OPEC boosts? Or is it still some weeks away before we start to see that?

speaker
Aristides Alafouzos
CEO, Okeanis EcoTankers

Well, I mean, two and a half weeks ago, three weeks ago, TD3 was at world scale 44, 45. And we made it up a couple of days ago to 57 and a half. we've seen, you know, more than a 20% increase of VLCC rates. And this has been, you know, it's obviously there's a short term cycles where it's a reason that this happens, you know, the position list ebbs and flows, but the bigger picture is that yes, these cargoes are coming back to the market. And at the same time that you also have the Indians diverting their supplies, uh, supply acquisitions. So I think it's a multitude of factors. But this week was expected to soften a little bit on the VLCCs. That's what our team had felt. And yesterday was indeed quiet on the day before. But today was actually quite a bit busier on the VLCCs. And we think that, you know, we made up to 57.5. It came off a few points. There's a view internally that it's bottom now. And this only can be because there's more cargoes coming out and the charters aren't able to sit back. like they would have in other times and hold the cargoes off the market to have the position list grow before they come back in. They clearly have more cargoes to cover, so they can't be as patient as they were. So I think that this is leading into an interesting September where we could see further upside. And I mean, the paper market is definitely pricing that as well. And the paper market, it doesn't predict the future, but it is traded by the most informed parties

speaker
Omar Nocta
Analyst, Jefferies

in the shipping market who are the oil majors and the predominantly the traders okay yeah very good well well thank you appreciate that and uh well we'll see how how things develop here thanks again guys i'll turn it back thank you we now turn to peter horgan with abg your line is open please go ahead good afternoon guys um

speaker
Peter Horgan
Analyst, ABG

The first question I had written was partly at least answered now after Omar's questions. But in terms of cleaning up, as you said, not many companies do that. But is it possible to say something about the levels, call it the spread between either the Vs or the Susmaxs versus... the MR rates that will put that trade into profits. Do you sort of need MR rates in sort of the high 20s, 30s, or is it an inflection point prior to that? So the economics, as specific as you assume that you can be, please, in terms of switching.

speaker
Aristides Alafouzos
CEO, Okeanis EcoTankers

Hi, Peter. Thank you for your question. I think it depends a lot on each charter. So if the vessel is able to load directly from the terminal and load the full cargo or load a majority of the cargo, and then you limit the further SPS operation that's required, you really reduce the cost of the loading operations. And this is a cost that the charter bears. If some of the charters who control the terminals and have berths that can load a VLCC, obviously you're much more competitive than a trader who might have to buy five or six cargoes and load them individually by STS because then you need to pay for each ship that comes and the operation. So that's a huge benefit. And then I think when does the deal make sense? Usually when the clean market is high and the VLCC market is low because you need you need to have that arbitrage where it makes sense to use a VLCC, but you can't have the VLCC market flying because then, you know, our alternative options will be too good. So obviously the clean market needs to be firm. The VLCC market needs to not be relatively as firm and the charter needs to be able to control the loading to limit its expenses. And the best way to do that, is to discharge and load into terminals and avoid multiple SDS operations, which are expensive.

speaker
Peter Horgan
Analyst, ABG

Okay. And a follow-up on that topic. How much of your fleet is currently now doing products? And how has that developed now over the past year, roughly, so to speak? We do remember, I think, well, I think at least I remember that. Was it six ships doing clean freight last summer at one time?

speaker
Aristides Alafouzos
CEO, Okeanis EcoTankers

Yeah, I mean, right now, we had one ship in Q2 and one ship in Q3, so it's not a big amount of the fleet. At times this year, we've had no vessels being on clean, so it really has to do, like you said, there's an inflection point between diesel pricing east to west, MR, LR2 rates,

speaker
Peter Horgan
Analyst, ABG

Okay, now that's at least very interesting to see that someone is capable of doing this on a spot basis. The second question, and I do know this is a very difficult question, but I just wanted to hear your thinking around what could potentially happen now in the case of any deal between the US and or Europe and Russia. I guess the big question is to what extent Russian barrels, both on crude and product, will return to Europe. But I just wanted to hear your thinking around that. Uh, the, the, the coming meeting.

speaker
Aristides Alafouzos
CEO, Okeanis EcoTankers

Um, well, I mean, the only thing that we know how to do well is fix ships or hopefully buy ships. But from what our view is, I think that the bid ask between Ukraine and Russia is still very wide. There's clearly a very big interest from Trump to come to a deal. But I don't know what Russia would currently offer would satisfy Ukraine and the Europeans. So, I mean, I think that if there's a ceasefire, perhaps we could see something from the United States, you know, softening a bit on its sanctions. But I think that I don't see that Europe changing its policy anytime soon on importing Russian crude into the European markets. or any removal of sanctions on the shadow fleet. I also don't think that there's any material risk of U.S. removal of independently owned tankers in the shadow fleet. You know, maybe there will be pressure for, you know, Sovkomflot, which is the Russian state-owned company. And that's a relatively small percentage of the shadow fleet, but I do not see... the U.S. rewarding independent owners who trade in the shadow fleet with sanctions removals. So I think that the ton-mile effect of Europe not importing will remain. Perhaps we see some fuel or VGO going to the United States. But I think my base case is that Trump and the U.S. remain frustrated in the medium term, and we don't see very much progress. And potentially...

speaker
Peter Horgan
Analyst, ABG

you know more strict sanctions coming okay thank you thank you for for your color on that just the final very sort of other topic question in the end here looking into second half and also 2026 dna dna is now running at approximately 4 million it's been well up and down a few times over the past quarters, but is this now the level that we should pencil in for second half and onwards?

speaker
Herakles Barounis
CFO, Okeanis EcoTankers

Let me jump in here. No, a rate of $4 million a quarter should not be the base case assumption. Let me just say that over the last couple of quarters, especially in Q2, because a lot of our GNA and OPEX, for that matter, is expensed in Euros. There's been an increase due to the exchange rate spike between the Euro and USD. Of course, this is countered by an exchange rate swap that we have put in place, although this is below the EBITDA line. So there is a gain that you will notice through our interest rate hedge. Setting aside the exchange rate factor, there is some seasonality on our G&A. I expect that half two will have a lower rate than what we had in half one. But of course, a lot of this is determined by the listing expenses that continue to creep up. I think it's a little too early to have visibility. My base case assumption would be consistent with both in terms of seasonality and overall level as we have this year, assuming that nothing crazy happens with the exchange rate that would skew the figures. Again, we are significantly hedged, but you just don't see those numbers above the EBITDA line. You see them below.

speaker
Peter Horgan
Analyst, ABG

Okay. Thank you, Herakles. Sure. That was all for me. Thank you. Thank you, Peter.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

We now turn to Liam Burke with BeReiter Securities. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

speaker
Liam Burke
Analyst, BeReiter Securities

Yes. Thank you. We discussed the unlikely event of sanctions being lifted, but the lifting of sanctions is always highlighted as a risk to the crude tanker sector. But even if sanctions were lifted, wouldn't that shift traffic away from the shadow fleet to the more conventional vessels and still put you in a win-win situation?

speaker
Aristides Alafouzos
CEO, Okeanis EcoTankers

Hi. Thank you for your question. I mean, there's so many different parameters that it's so complicated. But what I think... One of the likely bullish scenarios that I see is that the United States allows and the price cap is removed and it allows the trade to go on normal vessels again. But the shadow fleet remains sanctioned. In terms of, let's say, the Chinese and the Indian buyers and the utilization of ships, we've seen that OFAC sanctions are by far the most effective at limiting utilization. But this is for the shadow trade. If we're talking about the compliant trade, whether you're sanctioned by the US, the UK, or Europe, it doesn't make a difference. And I think just an example is that the entire insurance market is controlled by US and European insurance companies. No owner of a sanctioned vessel in the US, UK, Australia will be able to insure their vessels or have classification or have a first class flag while have sanctions on them. And there's a very small overlap between sanctions of the EU, the US and the UK. It has not been coordinated at all. The fact that they're not overlapping means it's very complicated for these vessels to have, you know, if the U.S. removes sanctions, it doesn't mean that they still won't be sanctioned by the other two authorities. So I think, yes, there's many cases in the different scenarios of how sanctions, you know, a sanctions reduction scenario plays out that could remain very bullish for tankers.

speaker
Liam Burke
Analyst, BeReiter Securities

Thank you. And your operating cost per vessel ticked up again this quarter. Is there anything unusual, or is it just your normal quarter-to-quarter variability?

speaker
Aristides Alafouzos
CEO, Okeanis EcoTankers

I'll let you actually answer, because I focus on bringing in the money.

speaker
Herakles Barounis
CFO, Okeanis EcoTankers

I'd say this is focusing on running the vessels as best as possible and bringing the revenue. So That obviously has a bit of an impact on OPEX, but I think the larger impact has to do with what I explained to Peter earlier. Because, you know, a significant part of our OPEX, more so than other peers, I expect, due to our crew composition, is based on euros. The exchange rate does play a bit of an impact. So I think partially it's explained by that. The rest is just, again, seasonality. Overall, I think, you know, compared to last year, setting aside the exchange rate difference, we expect that the cost should be relatively flat, maybe slightly above, but nothing significantly.

speaker
Liam Burke
Analyst, BeReiter Securities

Great. Thank you, Atlas.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Sure. As another reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad now. We now turn to Clement Mullins with Value Investors Edge. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

speaker
Clement Mullins
Analyst, Value Investors Edge

Hi. Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions. My first question is also on the geopolitical side. You mentioned you're seeing a large shift in India's import preferences. Should this continue or even accelerate? Where do you think the Russian volumes will end up? Do you think China would be willing to further increase its imports of Russian crude?

speaker
Aristides Alafouzos
CEO, Okeanis EcoTankers

Thanks for your question. I mean, you know, I think Trump is able to use his power against certain countries to force them to divert their crude at the expense of tariffs or sanctions. And these are countries that are more your allies or your friends. And I think that Turkey and India are more susceptible to Trump's pressure. The Russian crude that is no longer being bought by the Turks and the Indians will have to be sold into China. They're the only other buyer of this crude. I expect that the Indians are price sensitive. So if we see a big decrease in the Russian pricing of their crude and the discount to others grows a lot, perhaps they buy a bit more again. But the only other outlet of Russian crude is China. So Turkey, India reduce. China increases and it's a dramatic effect to tonn miles for that trade. We already see that it's stretched the shadow fleet. The shadow fleet, the positions being up in the north are diminished. The rates in that market are rumored to have increased substantially. And as we go into the winter, I do expect that there will be more purchase inquiries for older tonnage to slot into that fleet and service that trade.

speaker
Clement Mullins
Analyst, Value Investors Edge

Thanks for the color. And this one is more on the product side, but Europe is set to crack down on its imports of refined Russian crude, which was previously allowed. To what extent do you believe that's enforceable and do you envision any impact on the overall market?

speaker
Aristides Alafouzos
CEO, Okeanis EcoTankers

Well, I mean, The imports of Indian and Turkish products, it's a sizable percentage of the European clean product consumption, but it's nowhere near the majority. It's a relatively small percentage. I do think that trade flows will adjust, but it is complicated. I don't understand the workings of a refinery. very well but i assume that they have multiple storage tanks i assume that they blend different types of crudes to produce the optimum output of different clean products and part of that could be russian crudes and you know issuing certificates for some crews that some products that do or don't have russian food inside is is messy and it's definitely nothing that's occurred in the industry so far so we'll have to see how they how that's dealt with in the future But it'll definitely be interesting to see it.

speaker
Clement Mullins
Analyst, Value Investors Edge

Definitely. Only time will tell. That's all from me. Thank you for taking my questions, and congratulations for the quarter.

speaker
Aristides Alafouzos
CEO, Okeanis EcoTankers

Thank you. Hopefully, next quarter, we're able to do the same.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

This concludes our Q&A. I'll now hand back to Rachelis Parounis for any final remarks.

speaker
Herakles Barounis
CFO, Okeanis EcoTankers

Yes. Thanks, everyone, for dialing in and participating. It's been a long call for middle of the summer. We look forward to touching base again in November. Thank you very much. Bye-bye.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, today's call is now concluded. We'd like to thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.

Disclaimer

This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.

-

-