Jeff Pribor: Thanks, Omar.
Operator: Thank you, Omar. With our next question comes from Ben Nolan from Stifel. Ben, your line is now open.
Ben Nolan: Thank you. Hey, Jeff, Lois. You guys, once again crushed on the LR1s or Panamaxes that’s a pretty nice sweet spot for you. But I did notice in the appendix that I think three of the charter in vessels are coming up for renewal. How should we think about sort of your position there? I mean, obviously it costs more to charter in vessels today, so you’d be taking a long position, but you’d make a lot of money. Simply put, should we model in that you’ll continue to be chartering and vessels for the LR1 trade?
Lois Zabrocky: We’re working on it, but I almost would model them falling off and then let us surprise you, when we manage to cure some renewals. It’s a frothy market out there, Ben, but we’re working it.
Ben Nolan: Yes. I am sure it is. Okay. Well, to the extent that it’s a frothy market, I mean, do you put any of your other assets on longer? I know you have a handful, but take advantage of the froth in the other direction.
Lois Zabrocky: Yes. No, absolutely. And as the market has increased, the team is starting to layer that in. In Q1 we put out one Suezmax for a couple of years, and it’s just building on itself. So yes, we will €“ we don’t have a huge target somewhere between 10%, 15% at the moment that we would look to put on time charter.
Ben Nolan: Okay. And then lastly, for me to sort of keeping with the charter in aspect of things on, again, I think it was Page 21 of the presentation, there was a note about charter in or the work boats for lightering. I’m just curious, maybe think a little bit about sort of where €“ how you think about the lightering business. It’s always been this little sort of quiet addon. Where does that fit into the profile for you guys going forward?
Lois Zabrocky: Well, basically, the lightering is a very low cost base. It takes a small amount of capital and it’s essentially a very high touch business. So it keeps us very close to customers, and they really outdid themselves to the upside in 2022. Now, a piece of that, the SPR released a tremendous amount of barrels and that also created a lot of activity that when we’re looking at the lightering and we see, okay, how does that fit into everything? In Q1, if you were to put $1.5 million of EBITDA in Q1 for lightering and try to keep that steady, that could be a potential plug number. I think trying to build it up from the work boats is really very fraught because the lightering business is, responds to the tanker market as well, right.
So when you have a tremendous amount of exports/imports, not only in U.S. Gulf, but in Panama and the U.S. West Coast, it’s really been a little gem for International Seaways and it’s a team that’s really pulling more than their weight. But that would be my plug number if you wanted to model that.
Ben Nolan: Okay. Very helpful. I appreciate it. Thanks both.
Operator: Thank you, Ben. Our next question comes from Greg Lewis of BTIG. Greg, your line is now open.
Greg Lewis: Hi, good morning. Thank you everybody. Hey, Lois, I was hoping you could talk a little bit about EEXI, realizing that I guess, it’s kind of, this is more of a data year than an actual execution year. As we think about the outlook and the potential impact for what that has on the fleet. Any thoughts you can share with us about vessel efficiency as really EEXI kind of flows through the crude tanker fleet?
Lois Zabrocky: Yes, absolutely. In fact, I’m going to, Greg, I’m going to throw that one to Bill Nugent, who is the head of our technical department.
Bill Nugent: Hi, how are you today?
Greg Lewis: I’m doing great. Thanks Bill.
