Svein Moxnes Harfjeld: That’s a good question. So I think barring sort of a major curve in all markets and our business and what not, then I think to change this new policy, it would have to be in the context of some big strategic changes or a strategic move or a big M&A transaction where you need to phrase things differently. And if that is the case, I think we need to give the market and our holders sort of a good heads up rolling advances, supposed to say, starting next week. So that’s just a general thinking behind that. But it’s been sort of our ambition all along to try to build a company that has the ability to really reward holders with the general dividends. And part of that is also to have lower leverage. So it’s sort of one of the — that’s the sort of pillars of what we’re trying to build.
So — and we don’t want to be a company that is viewed as turning quickly from left to right and not to have visibility for our owners. So I think there was one person who told us some years back that what’s wrong with you guys, you’re just doing what you said you’re going to do. And we took that as a complement and it’s still with us.
Operator: We will take our next question. And the question comes from the line of Michael Beall from Davenport.
Michael Beall: I’d like to go back quickly to the dark or shadow fleet. What do you estimate the size of that fleet is? And presumably, we define it as ships owned by Russian interest. And can you comment, and perhaps it’s speculation, towards the longer term ramifications of this ownership. Do you believe that they will behave in the marketplace like someone who is a commercial operator or do they have a little different agenda that may cause them to ultimately make the market tighter, worse? Can they weaponize this ownership of critical world infrastructure?
Svein Moxnes Harfjeld: That’s a big question. So there’s some nuances here in the shadow fleet. So you have the trade that is sort of — is fully sanctioned being transporting crude from Venezuela and from Iran. So — and then you have what is on our partly sanctioned and also by some companies is self-sanctioned, which is the transportation of Russian crude oil. And we have seen in the last 6 to 9 months in particular, a significant amount of funds being made available to companies in Dubai that are either own maybe — whether it’s owned by Russians or other people, there’s a lot of variation there. But there is — the source of funds is really the key for us in understanding what drives this. And we do have a sense that a lot of these businesses that are buying older ships are funded by Russian capital in some shape or form.
And they are buying these ships to transport Russian crude oil and they do that at a significant premium. So they make more money than the compliant market is doing. So there’s a significant commercial incentive for them in being willing to do that in itself. Whether they have any sort of political agenda or military agenda and stuff like that, frankly, I don’t know. And in terms of size, we saw earlier this week one of the largest trading companies in the world suggested that this shadow fleet is moving up towards 600 ships in total. And this is not only VLCCs, obviously, it’s also Suezmaxes, Aframaxes and product tankers that are transporting refined products. So this could well be. And I’m sure they are very careful about this because they are users or big users of ships.
