Oeyvind Lindeman
Analyst · Evercore ISI. Please ask your question
Thank you, Niall. As you've seen and heard, we completed our strong track record of high utilization and earnings during the quarter. Our fleet transported a total of 1.25 million tons of LPG, 145,000 tons of ammonia and 58,000 tons of petrochemical gases across the 28 vessels. At the end of the quarter, 17 of the ships were trading under-term contracts and 11 were trading in the spot market. The lack of vessels were concluded for 22 voyage charters where half of these were schedule to load from US ports. Of interest, a couple of trends have manifested themselves during the quarter, which are worth mentioning. First US LPG inventories was steadily increasing during the three months reflecting America's increasing surplus of propane and butane. At quarter end, the inventories reached an all-time high of 80 million barrels, a 30% increase over the 5-year average of 60 million barrels. Historically, the LPG build up is steady during the summer month and peaks just prior winter. However this year, the inventory build-up has broken new grounds with no easing in sight and we're only in the middle of summer and still several months to go, before winter kicks in. We all know that US is low on LPG, but this is just another indicator LPG exports America is here to stay. Second, during the last earnings call, we mentioned attractiveness of US-produced ethylene to international buyers. Ethylene has continuously been exported mainly on handysized ethylene gas carriers, since the beginning of this year and we're expected to carry on into the third quarter. Essentially adding some miles to our segment, as to receiving customers are located pretty far away in Europe and Asia, so the voyages are long. In parallel, US-produced propylene surfaced on export market this April and as to-date with resulted in 15 export listings [ph] from the US basis 46,000 tons parcel prices on smaller 8,000 to 10,000 cubic meter gas carriers. Generally, once the market is established, we tend to size grip in terms of competition. And therefore, we expect the portion of these done to be moved from handysized vessels in the near future. Both these developments of ethylene and propylene production on the back of multibillion investment in US chemical infrastructure, a part of change is taking place in America, which Navigator is and will benefit from. New markets and trade patterns are emerging for the petrochemical trades and we're excited to be able to further develop and capitalize on these changes. Thank you.