Euronav Reports Earnings; Pushes Fuel Economy

Press Release January 23, 2013

Belgium's Euronav reported a net loss of US$ 31-million in its Q4 2012 financial report.

The result of the fourth quarter is affected positively by the revaluation at marked-to-market levels of non cash items (unrealized) such as hedge instruments on interest rates for a total of US$ 600,000.

Fuel savings measures
After successfully implementing a strict slow and super slow steaming policy whenever possible, Euronav continues to apply measures to reduce fuel consumption across its spot fleet. The company has already retrofitted a VLCC, with a Mewis Duct, improving propeller efficiency, which demonstrated to be the most efficient energy saving device. The same retrofitting will be done on at least 4 Suezmax vessels this year. Furthermore the company will install electrical fuel oil heaters on 10 Suezmax vessels which can decrease the consumption by up to 20% when the ship is doing super slow steaming. Finally the company will deploy fuel oil mass flow meters to monitor and improve the consumption more accurately.

Euronav Tanker Fleet
The time charter contract of the VLCC TI Guardian (1993. 290,927 dwt) which was running until October 2013 and would have cost the company in charter hire an estimated 13 million was terminated in November 2012. She was the oldest vessel of the fleet and was booked as a finance lease. As a result, the company booked a capital gain of 2.8 million in the 4th quarter. Euronav directly time-chartered in fleet consist now of only one vessel.

The Suezmax Cap Georges (1998 146,652 dwt), which is an ice-class vessel, has been chartered out for the winter starting 1 December 2012.

The company observes that the global supply of ships must be reduced, and specifically the balance between the newbuildings due to be delivered this year and the scrapping of older ships, which is fundamental to a stronger rebound in the tanker market.