Okay. Good morning and welcome to the presentation of the fourth quarter result and the preliminary 2019 results for Odfjell SE that we are presenting here from Oslo this morning. We are live-streaming the presentation, so kindly ask you to wait with questions until the end, after the presentation where both Terje and myself will be available to answer questions. I think from a safety perspective, I don't think there's any planned test of the alarm system, so if the alarm system goes off, we should take it seriously and follow the exit signs that you'll find out in the foyer. I will start with the highlights and then Terje, he will come on and cover the financials, and then I will come back and cover the operational review and comment on the strategy.
I will finish off with the prospects and the markets update, and then we will have, as I said, a Q&A towards the end of the presentation. Fourth quarter highlights. The short version is that it was a better quarter, driven by improvements in the chemical tanker markets. Our EBITDA in the quarter came out at $58 million. That was up $7 million compared to the third quarter. Out of those $7 million, five came from tankers and two came from terminals. That gave us a net result of $10 million, minus compared to $1 million in the last quarter. If you adjust for non-recurring items, the result was minus $7 million in the fourth quarter compared to minus $15 million in the third quarter.
Spot rates on the main freight lanes was up, 12% compared to the third quarter, and it was up 25% over the year, as you will see on the next slide. The COA renewal rate was up 6.5% in the average for 2019. Finally, the last month of the year, December, was the first month of underlying operational profit in OTFIL since May of 2017. You can say that's a little bit self-inflicting to highlight it like that, but I think it's nonetheless important to see that everything that we have been working with becomes visible now that the markets pick up and we are back where, I think, close to where we should be, hopefully. On the key figures on the right, I'm not gonna spend too much time on this, on this slide.
I think, Terje, he will cover the figures in more detail, as we get to the financial section. What we are guiding is that we believe that the markets have turned and there are strong fundamentals. There are also some risk items out there that we are watching. If you look only at the fundamentals, then we do believe that the markets have turned and we will see a continued improvement into first quarter and that the markets will be firming throughout 2020. Highlights for the full year of 2019. As I said, the chemical tanker markets improved compared to 2018, 25% spot rates up if you measure it over the year, and COA rates were up by 6.5%.
Now, 6.5% does not sound like a lot, but if you add to that that we have been able to pass on the full risk of the, compliant fuel cost to our customers, 6.5% is quite significant when you work that back to, to on a net basis. The full year estimate, the full year, results was, minus $37 million compared to $211 million in 2018. If you again adjust for non-recurring items and IFRS 16, the net result improved $33 million in 2019 compared to, 2018. We also, in 2019, concluded the reorganization of Nordic Mining terminals. As you'll see later, we now have a smaller but a healthier and more efficient platform on terminals, and we have sold our terminal in Tianjin at a, at an attractive price.
In terms of market development, we continue to see that demand is outgrowing supply now for the second year, and the supply picture looks very promising with basically no new orders being placed. I will get back to that when we cover the market forecast towards the end of the presentation. At this point, I'm gonna hand it over to Terje, and then I'll come back afterwards.
Thank you, Kristian, and good morning to everybody. I will start going through the detailed P&L for the business areas. Start with the tankers. We saw this quarter that the revenue went slightly up compared to the third quarter, ended at $215.6 million. It was, as Kristian said, an improvement in the rates and the earnings. At the same time, we had fewer days, so we did not see that large increase in the gross revenue that you should expect, mostly due to off-hire schedule, off-hire during this quarter. We see that the waste expenses went down to $85.9 million this quarter, also related to fewer sailing days, and also fewer term charter vessels in this quarter. After fuel distributions of $13.5 million, we ended with a term charter earnings of $116.2 million compared to $113 million in the third quarter.
Term charter expenses went down from $10.5 million to $8.8 million, mostly related to that we re-delivered two term charter vessels this quarter. Going forward, we will enter more term charter vessels into our fleet, so we expect that figure to increase, also then contributing to more gross revenue from the fleet at the total. Operating expenses stable, as preceding quarters, slightly down with $2 million, $1.5 million . G&A ended at $16.9 million, up $1.1 million compared to the third quarter, and that led to an EBITDA for chemical tankers at $50.1 million. Depreciation slightly up to $24.2 million due to delivery of one additional newbuilding from Hudong, which increased the depreciation this quarter.
We had a small impairment of $2.4 million, that is related to one vessel that we have agreed to divest in the first quarter. We are selling this vessel built in 1995 at $4.1 million, and we had taken impairment already in the fourth quarter. That leads to an EBIT of $10.5 million compared to $8.7 million in the third quarter, but then including the impairment of $2.4 million. Net input expenses went down from $21.8 million to $19.9 million in the fourth quarter, mostly related to the payment of a bond in September, but also related to reduced labor towards the end of the year. After other financial items and taxes, we ended then with a net result for the chemical tankers at negative $9.4 million compared to negative $14.8 million in the third quarter.
Looking at the terminals, we see that we have an increase in the gross revenue from $16.4 million to $18 million. That is mostly related to increased revenue in the U.S. business and also at the terminal in Dalian in China. After OpEx at $6.8 million and G&A at $3.4 million, we then ended with an EBITDA of $7.8 million, a small increase compared to $6 million in the third quarter. Depreciation, very much the same level as the last quarter. We had impairments of some small items within the terminal business of $0.7 million, and we ended with an EBIT at $1.4 million compared to $16.6 million in the third quarter, but that included the gain from the sale of the Yantian terminal with $15.9 million in the third quarter.
After finance, other financial items and taxes, we ended then with negative $0.2 compared to $13.2 in the third quarter, but again, that was included with a capital gain from the, from the Yantian terminal. Looking at total, also including gas, we ended then with a term charter earnings or, or gross net revenue at $135.1, EBITDA of $58 million, and an EBIT of $11.7. After finance, we ended then with a net result of negative $10 million, earnings per share of $0.12, adjusting for, for non-recurring items, the, the impairments both within the chemical tanker business and the terminal business. We had then an EPS of negative $0.08 in this, this quarter. Looking at the balance sheet, we see that, ships and newbuilding contracts increased this quarter due to delivery of one newbuilding from Hudong-Zhonghua Shipbuilding.
At the same time, we see that we have cash on the balance sheet around $100 million, down $10 million compared to the third quarter. We also see that the total equity now is around $550 million, which is around 27%. If we adjust for debt related to right of use of assets, we are around 30% equity share, end of the fourth quarter. We also see that the non-current interest-bearing debt is increasing somewhat, and that is related to the delivery of the new building, taking out the final installment and drawing up on the loan for that vessel. We also see that the net or the current portion of interest-bearing debt is reduced this quarter from $199 million to $158.7 million.
On total assets, we are then trading around $2 billion at the end of the fourth quarter. Looking at the cash flow, we see that we have delivered improved cash flow from operations in the last quarters compared to the beginning of the year. That is mostly related to the increased earnings. At the same time, we see that we had a larger improvement in the third quarter, but that's mainly related to improvement in the working capital in the third quarter, which leads no more on a normalized level in the fourth quarter. Investing activities related to the last installment from the new Hudong newbuilding, 57.84.
After finance, more at kind of business as usual, negative or positive 21.8, we ended with a net cash flow for the quarter at negative 10.7, compared to 7, 7.0 positive in the third quarter. Bunker expenses, of course, one of our main cost components. We see that we are very stable from quarter to quarter, measuring our bunker cost. That is also related to the bunker adjustment clauses we have in our contracts. That is adjusting the volatility. In this quarter, we had around 52% of our bunker cost covered through the bunker adjustment clauses, and that is also what we expect going forward. In the range, 50-55% will be covered through the bunker adjustment clauses.
As Kristian mentioned, we have adjusted all the bunker adjustment clauses to reflect the new regulations related to compliant bunker fuel going forward. We also have very limited financial hedges going forward, so it's the contract really that is covering the exposure for the bunker cost going forward, but we expect that to be quite good taken care of because we also see that going back one year in time, we see that actually the spread between the prices for MGO and VLSFO today compared to HFO at the beginning of the year is not that large. Actually, the bunker cost has not increased that much. As I said, we also expect the contract to take care of that, and also the spot market will take care of that part of the business.
We did, a few weeks back, we did a tap issue on some of our bonds, around $300 million, was secured through a few hours out in the market, quite successfully, we think. The margin is fully swapped to U.S. dollar, around 5.2%, which is lower than the current outstanding bonds. At the same time, we plan to use that to facilitate, to repay some of the more expensive financial lease structures we have, where we today are paying around 2, 72.2% or two of the vessels that intend to refinance, based on this, which then will reduce our cost break even for those vessels with around $3,000 per day. It's not material, but it's showing how we are kind of focusing on our balance sheet to take down capital cost and also be more competitive on the financing expenses for the company.
Debt development going forward, we see that we have quite limited repayments, owes and balloons in the remainder of the year. We have some balloons in the third quarter that we will most likely refinance during the first half of this year. Then we have the bond maturing in first quarter in 2021, which we may consider to refinance at some stage, most likely during the fall this year. Going forward, we expect the gross debt will increase in 2020 due to increase in the fleet. We still have three newbuildings to be delivered from Hudong-Zhonghua Shipbuilding in China, and we will draw upon that financing, increasing the total debt for the company. Going forward from that, we expect to see a declining gross debt in the company.
Also as a part of this aim to reduce the cost, the break-even cost for our fleet, we should also target to decrease the total debt for the company. CapEx program, not very much new actually compared to the previous on the tanker business. We have still a delivery this time for newbuildings from Hudong to be delivered during 2020. That has been totally 100% financed already, so we do not need to inject any equity to take delivery of those vessels. In addition, of course, we have expected the docking expenses and some newbuilding or some installments on equipment on the vessels, but that is quite limited compared to the total investments. Tank terminals, we have not guided very much on that in the previous presentations.
We are now kind of moving forward with our plans for the U.S. business for the terminal in Houston. We are indicating here what we think will kind of materialize in expansion CapEx in the coming years. We estimate our part to be around $32 million. Only a small part has been approved so far, and it could also be a larger amount, but this is kind of the project that we are looking at at the current stage, and which we think will materialize in the coming years. As we indicated before, this is planned to be financed within the joint venture without any capital injections from the business, from the owners into the joint ventures. In addition, we also have planned maintenance CapEx for the terminals, which will come in addition to the planned CapEx program.
I will leave the word to you, Kristian. Yes. Thank you, Jay.
It says operational and strategic review. I think it's gonna be more on the operational this time. I think we plan to cover our strategy in depth when we get to the capital market day. We're not gonna touch too much on the strategy today. If I start you off on the bottom of this slide, you're looking at the CRA rates and the spot rates. The light blue bars is the spot rate, and the dark blue bars are the contract rates. A few things jump out when you look at that. First of all, it's clear that the spot market has been increasing throughout the year. It's up 25% over the year, and if you only look at third to fourth quarter, it's up 12%.
That is absolutely a stronger, stronger spot market we are witnessing. What you are also seeing, although not as clearly, is that the dark blue bars on the bottom have been a sliding scale in terms of our contract rates for the past couple of years, and you are seeing that trend beginning to reverse by the middle of last year. One of the reasons we think that happened is that, you know, we believe so strongly in the fundamentals in this market that it did not make sense for us to extend contracts or renew or take new contracts at the current market levels or at loss-giving levels, unsustainable levels, as we call them.
We have had to say no, and we have had to be very, I'll say, take a firm stance in terms of how we were rating those contracts. Whether it was the market that helped us or whether it was us taking a stand, who knows. At least the result is that now we are seeing that the average contract rate is coming up, and that's quite an important, important vector. Spot market will come up and down a little bit, but it looks that that's also a fundamental increase. The result of that is what you're looking at on the top side, and that is that our contract coverage has gone down from around 60% to around, let's say, 52% in the fourth quarter. That does a couple of things.
First of all, of course, it exposes us more to a spot market, but as long as that spot market is stronger, that's a good thing. The second thing it does is that it allows us actually to operate a little bit more efficiently. That's one of the things that you'll see on the next slide when you look at the ODFIX index against the chemical tanker spot index. We're talking about the cargo mix in our fuel tankers. Like, any market will work the way that if there's a tightness on supply, that means that if you have the freedom to pick and choose, you can package the ships better than you could if you are locked into a very rigid contract program.
That's kind of what we're seeing now, that, you know, we have a higher contract rate, we have a stronger spot market. If you blend those rates, that means that our average rates will go up, but it also means that we can pick and choose and optimize the ships better than we have been able to with a stronger contract portfolio. As long as the spot market stays stronger, that's, of course, a good thing. If the spot market should take a dip, then we are exposed more to the market. As I said, the fundamentals are so strong in the market that we believe that this is probably a good spot to be, around 50% of our capacity sold forward, on average about one year.
What you're seeing on the right-hand side, and if I also start you on the bottom, is that our days, number of ship days is flat in the fourth quarter compared to third quarter. Actually, on top of that, we have had a quite high number of off-hires. What you're seeing on the top bar is that the volumes have decreased in the fourth quarter. That's basically caused by the disruption that was in the beginning of the quarter in the Middle East, and the ripple effects of that. The volumes have been lower, and that has now picked up, but you will see those in the quarterly figures. One of the key things we have been discussing the last couple of years has been the impact of IMO 2020.
You know, 1st of January is behind us, and it's kind of interesting to see what actually happened. This, what you're looking at here is the comparison of bunker prices in November, December, January, February. On the right-hand side, you are looking at the forward curve for fuel. There are a few interesting things. First of all, the spread between HFO and low sulfur fuel oil was widening when we got close to the turn of the year between December and January. In January, that spread was $250, and the Scrubber believers declared victory because, if that spread stays like that, it's a huge financial gain to have a Scrubber installed. What you're seeing after January is that that spread is starting to come down.
Part of that is probably the drop in oil price, but a part of it is also that we think that the markets are now kind of normalizing. When you get into the second half, we believe that that spread will be even lower. We will see what happens. The other thing that's interesting from this graph is if you look at the dotted lines, the vertical dotted lines, the yellow and the red one, that's the last two years' average fuel cost that Odfjell paid for HFO. That was around $425. If you compare that to the forward price of compliant fuel as it looks today, $428, it looks like the total fuel cost for Odfjell and the impact of IMO 2020 will not be significant in any way.
I also remind you when you look at this picture that 50% of our capacity includes bunker clauses that insulate us from any effects of a spike in compliant fuel cost. That is, of course, the contract part, but what about the spot market? Now, this slide gets a little bit busy, but as I said, half of our capacity is sold forward on contracts. We have bunker clauses there. The 50% of the spot, what we're seeing now is here, the top two graphs are U.S. Gulf exports to Europe and to the Far East, and the lower two ones are the Middle East to Europe and the Far East. The dark bars are the gross rates as reported by Clarkson's. As you'll see, September '54, October '53, November '54, December '55.
You can see, we there's a $2 increase in December because you have to start burning compliant fuel. The added cost per ton for that freight lane is $2. You have to add that in reality to the gross freight in December. You go to January, and you see that the gross freight is now $62. If you net out those two extra $2 of cost, you get to a net freight of $60. The markets have more than absorbed the additional bunker clause. The feeling, in a sense, in the market is that owners, not only us, are fairly disciplined in passing on that extra fuel cost to the market. It's pretty much the same figure you're seeing on all the other trades.
US Gulf to Europe, it's another $5 on top of the bunkers. U.S. Gulf to Far East, it's also another $5. In the Middle East, it's $2 or $3, if I remember correctly. At least, the point of this slide is that the market is absorbing the fuel cost. If we turn our picture, our view to the terminals for a little bit, I mentioned earlier that we have a healthier portfolio. We have a cleaner setup, and we have a lower cost. What you're looking at on the top right-hand side, you can see our EBITDA margin growing steadily since, I would say, third quarter, 2018. We are now up at, on average, around 45%, and we believe that that has to grow even further, but we are on the right track. Terminal in Houston is full. It's at capacity, 100%.
We have, as Terje just mentioned, plans to expand that terminal within the current footprint, the land footprint of that terminal. The average occupancy for our total portfolio terminal is at 93%, and there is especially one terminal in China that is not producing, in Tianjin, as it should. I also maybe add a few comments on the Lindsey Goldberg exit. They are out of most of the regions. They are still in Asia, which means our terminal in Korea and the two remaining terminals in China. What we are saying here is, depending on what price Lindsey Goldberg gets offered on the two Chinese terminals, we might consider to tag along for those two Chinese terminals. It is too early to say, and with the coronavirus going on, there is some uncertainty to the timing of when that can happen.
Prospects and markets update. If there are any crude and product people in the room, they will say that this is not the current picture of the market. The point with this slide is we compare third quarter to fourth quarter, and the point is that when you're seeing a general firming trend in the tanker market, that absolutely rocks off on the chemical tanker market. Since this picture, the market has been falling back somewhat. I mean, MRs are no longer 21; it's 18, or something like that. 18 is still a very healthy number. I think the fundamentals in tankers are still quite strong. There's some nervousness now about macro and what that virus can lead to.
In general, we are seeing a stronger tanker picture, and that should be helping us, both in terms of sentiment and in terms of the swing tonnage that I'll be speaking to in just a minute. That was a short minute because here it is. Swing tonnage is really tricky to measure because when does a ship actually enter and exit the chemical trade and go back into CPP when she's ballasting? Is it from discharge? Is it from loading? There is a time lag also from when the ships clean up and turn around and so on. We have been tracking it systematically. What you're seeing here is a picture of the percentage of all MRs, how many of those trade in what we call EC chemicals or vejoils.
As you can see, as the number of IMO 2 MRs got delivered, there was naturally a bigger part of those that venture into kind of the methanols and the vejoils. It came, on the peak, it was 27% of the total MR fleet. Now we are seeing that beginning to reverse. By January, that number is down to 25.1%. We are seeing that reversing. When you look at the supply picture for chemical tankers and a very, very limited order book, this has a real effect also on the real supply picture in the chemical tanker market. We are feeling that positive momentum in our markets. Excuse me.
Swing tonnage is not only a bad thing because there's also what we like to call reverse swing tonnage because if the CPP markets are very strong, it also is an opportunity for OTFIL's ships to trade into CPP. Most people forget that a big stainless steel tanker is absolutely capable of trading a full cargo of clean if that makes economic sense. There's nothing that prevents us from taking a share of the CPP market when that's really strong. We do, especially for backhaul and repositioning the ships. When you look at the bottom part of this graph, you're looking at OTFIL's share of spot lifting in CPP on our backhaul routes. In the second half of 2019, that was a third up from, yeah, 15-20% up to, say, 33%.
That's the backhaul. We do also take some front haul in our bigger ships. If there's suddenly an arbitrage to be made to have a round voyage on gasoline or diesel or jet or whatever, we do that. We have ships in those trades as we speak. Swing tonnage also goes the other way. A very strong CPP market will absolutely mean that we also take an opportunistic view on that market. Indirectly or directly, it also helps us that the CPP markets are strong. I spoke about the order book already. It's at historically low figures. On the left-hand side, order book to fleet ratio going back to 1999 hasn't been lower than it is today, around 6%, 6.2% was the latest number.
That means that the projected fleet growth in 2020 is gonna be 1.4%. In 2021, which could be an interesting year, 0.4%, basically no growth at all. Then, 2% from 2022. After that, there is a very, very limited order. We, of course, keep our ears closely to the ground in terms of who are speaking to what yards, and are people considering ordering new stainless steel ships? It is very, very far—there is very far between people who are looking at this segment. If anything, people were actually on the way out instead. A lot of the financially based investors want to sell. They do not want to invest. People like Stolt-Nielsen and Odfjell and MOL do not seem to be ordering either. I think the supply picture is pretty much under control for the moment.
If we do get a big spike in the market, you know, and if history repeats itself, we will see orders. At least for the moment, it's very limited, and it helps to support our view that the fundamentals for the chemical tanker market is quite strong. Our market outlook, nothing new in terms of the message that low cost production capacity is ramping up in the U.S. and the Middle East. This is not paper projections. These are actually production facilities coming on stream and beginning to ship. The good thing about U.S. and Middle East is that it will have to travel longer distances, which means it increases the ton mile demand. There's a quite strong demand picture out there. We are saying that the demand is gonna grow by roughly around 5%.
Some uncertainty with that. I'll talk about the risk factors in a moment, but it might be a little bit higher or a little bit lower, but the fundamental demand for transport of chemicals is absolutely a strong picture. There's a reduced swing tonnage, for improved fundamentals for crude and product, as I just spoke about, will help that. The lack of new orders will also keep the supply picture under control. We are seeing around 2% supply growth. Now we are the second year of demand outgrowing supply, and that seems to be also the picture for the coming two years. About the risk factors, mainly related to macro, material global economic slowdown is, of course, discussion. There's a discussion about the trade wars and the discussion about the coronavirus.
I think the world is collectively holding its breath at the moment. Is it a black swan or just a white one that got dirty? We'll see. I think there's a very, very scary scenario, but the world is taking quite strong, quite strong measures. Hopefully, it will not be as bad as some people believe it will be, but it is a risk factor, and it could be the thing that pushes the world economy into a recession. Who knows? It's something that we all follow very closely. I also maybe want to say we have two terminals in China that continue to operate, but we have quite a lot of activities and ships calling China. It is something we are very much on top of.
In summary, markets are better. Our results are better. December was the first month of profit since 2017. First quarter is also looking good. We believe that we are gonna improve further in the first quarter compared to the fourth quarter. The transition of the compliant fuel has been successful, and the cost, both on COAs and on spot, has been passed on to the customers. We have a lower contract coverage, which means we can operate more efficiently and enjoy the benefits of a stronger spot market. On OTFIL terminals, we have improved margins driven by Houston and Dalian. The reorganization is completed. We still need to figure out how do we get Lindsey Goldberg's exit in place for the remaining terminals in Asia. Houston will be the main target for growth, as Ted also touched upon.
In terms of the market outlook, strong demand fundamentals and limited, limited fleet growth, and the main risks relates to macro. We expect to report improved results in first quarter 2020, and the chemical tanker market recovery is expected to continue throughout 2020. There are things to watch in, relating to the virus and the, and the macro picture. Finally, we are having a capital market day in Oslo on the 9th of June, and I hope that many of you will take the time to join us. With that, we'll take any questions you have. We tried to invite you so early in the morning that you are tired and don't have the energy. Yes.
Yeah. Good morning. [Peter Hagen from Kepler Cheuvreux]. The COA rate renewal, is that be up 6.5%?
Looking at the charts, I'm just, that's the marginal cargoes, and their increase in rates, not the average COA rates.
It's the average, it's actually the average increase for the contract that has been renewed. Right. It's a mix of front haul and backhaul, and some of them will be up 10%, and some of them will be up less. It's the average blended, like-for-like improvement in dollar per ton rates for the contract renewed.
Which brings me to my next question. Where is those rates improving the most, and where are you leaving volumes that you otherwise would have, or where are you leaving volume that you no longer find profitable, and where are the improvements best?
I mean, we have 120 COAs.
It's really a difficult question to answer in a simple way. I mean, we have given up some big contracts that were big contracts out of the US, both for Europe and the Far East, but we have also taken other contracts in those trade lanes. We have also given up one big contract that was backhaul out of the Middle East back to the U.S. and Europe. I don't think there's a kind of a simple answer that will give you a good overview. It's very much dependent on where that specific trade is, and we go contract by contract and see if that contract is accredited to the earnings in this trade lane or not.
We have also extended at less than 6.5% because that volume is crucial in filling the ship up. Of course, we do not let that go if it is operationally important. It really is a matter of going contract by contract. I do not think, [John Kristian, do you have a better answer than that? I think it is, I do not think there is an overall pattern.
Thank you. Just one more from me, and that is about bunker prices going forward. You are, as I understand now, not going to put on any derivatives, trying to hedge out, and you are simply just going to have the COAs, which is still, all of them incorporating an escalation clause. For the spot volumes, you will stay open.
No, I think we, I mean, we have some contracts in place in, for the first quarter where we have hedged physical contracts. What effectively, it's a swap, hedging the, via low sulfur fuel price for the first quarter. In the past, we have been using derivatives, and we have a mandate to do so. I wouldn't rule out that we are gonna do it when we think it's right. At the moment, we don't have any, we don't have any in place. 50% is covered by bunker adjustment clauses, but the rest, if we feel that there's a, there's an opportunity to take some coverage, at, at below what we think is a reasonable level, we might take some derivatives. At the moment, we don't have any.
If I can just add one comment to that, the scary part about doing derivatives now is that it's a derivative of what? Is it a derivative of gas oil or HFO, right? And until you know what the base risk you're taking on, then any derivative is just a scary thing to do. Yeah, we don't have any at the moment. There are no other.
I have lots of things that I wonder about, so. Yeah, go. About the coronavirus. Yes. I mean, that's a question I get daily. How is that affecting shipping? Now I'm passing it onwards.
How is it affecting you guys, in terms of operational measures taken, and also if you can quantify what has happened in terms of slowdowns in terminals and port operations and so forth?
Two sides of your question. I think, in terms of what impact it may have, I mean, of all the global chemical trade, somehow China is involved in this, it is 26% of the world capacity. If it really goes badly and the country gets shut down, it will have a significant impact on demand and tradability. If we look at what has happened so far, we have not seen any cancellation of nominations of orders. We have not seen any slowdowns in nominations or any major disruptions to how the ships are traded.
The main impact has been, for instance, when you're planning a dry docking of a ship in China in the beginning of March, do you, like, send your ship there and let people stay in the shipyard, with a big crew of engineers from Norway, or do you try to reroute that ship to another destination for dry dock? Those kind of discussions. We have a ship that we have sold, that's going to be delivered in China. The crew's obviously nervous about going to China and repatriating from China. We hope that, it looks like now that delivery of that ship has been moved to Korea, for instance. These are kind of the disruptions. When ships are at shore, or in port, we don't allow the crew to go ashore on shore leave.
General precautions, you know, sanitizers and normal travel restrictions and vigilance in general, stay away from big conferences and so on. If you look at the actual tradability, the volume impact and ships being detained and so on, we haven't seen that yet. That doesn't say that it can't happen, but we haven't seen that happening yet.
About the implementation of the carriage ban, that's coming now a few weeks down the road. Has you experienced on your vessels any port states that are checking whether you are carrying HSFO on vessels which are not scrubber fitted?
I don't actually know. It's a good question. I would presume so.
I think we know that by 31st of December at one minute to midnight, we had totally on board all our OTFIL ships worldwide, we had eight tons of heavy fuel left, which I think is quite an achievement that we got it that close. We burned the last drop on the last day. Whether we actually have had port state controls, I would presume so, but I don't know that for a fact, but I can check it. It's a good question. Yeah, I don't have the answer. You ran out of questions. That's good. That's good. No, please. No, no other questions? Okay. We're gonna be available afterwards as well. As usual, please, never hold back.
Thank you for all the questions, and thank you for your attention and the interest in the company. Stay safe.