January 2026 marks the conclusion of one of the most traumatic collapses in the history of the Port of Las Palmas. Twelve years after the Danish empire of OW Bunker Canary Islands SL disintegrated in just a week, a court has issued a final ruling: absolution for the private equity fund and the senior executives involved. The verdict closes the door on liability claims, but does not erase the scar of a legal shipwreck that reached its critical point in Las Palmas in May 2016 with the famous ruling of the English Supreme Court in the ‘Res Cogitans’ case. It went from being worth 1 billion euros in 2014 to zero in less than seven months and in Las Palmas generated accounting chaos to the extent that it went into bankruptcy proceedings with hardly any economic mass because the money was in the parent company, according to financial sources.
To understand why the 2026 absolution is so relevant, one must go back to 2016. That year, the international maritime sector held its breath in the face of the ruling in the case PST Energy 7 Shipping LLC vs. OW Bunker Malta Limited. The English Supreme Court ruled that the bunkering contract was not a standard sales contract but a sui generis agreement.
This technical distinction had devastating consequences: as it was not an ordinary sale, the rules of title transfer did not apply. This allowed banks and insolvency administrators of OW Bunker to claim payment for the fuel even if ownership had never passed to the shipowner because the fuel had already been burned at sea.
The ‘Double Payment’ Nightmare in the Islands
The ANAVE circular had already warned about this since 2015: shipowners in the Canary Islands were ‘doomed to pay twice’. The scheme was a perfect trap. On one side, the insolvency administrator of OW Bunker Canary Islands demanded payment of the contractual invoice. On the other, the physical supplier (who actually delivered the fuel at the port of Las Palmas) threatened with the preventive seizure of ships claiming a maritime lien.
Many shipowners found themselves forced to legally deposit the money or negotiate tripartite agreements under suffocating pressure. As indicated by the jurisprudence of 2016, there was no ‘real justification’ for subjecting an operator to this double payment, but the strict application of maritime law left shipping companies in a limbo of legal uncertainty that has taken over a decade to resolve.
2026: A Verdict of Acquittal in a Transformed Market
The ruling of this January 2026, which exonerates the Altor Equity Partners fund and the management team, determines that the bankruptcy was not a criminal orchestration but the result of massive fraud in Singapore and a failed risk management. The court understands that the executives did not act with malice by demanding the payments that the ‘Res Cogitans’ ruling of 2016 indirectly validated.
However, for Spanish shipping companies operating on the Atlantic route, the absolution is only the epilogue of a forced transformation. That crisis forced changes in bunkering contracts, eliminating the gray areas that allowed the chaos of 2014. The risk of direct action—similar to that which exists in land transport—obliged operators to be much more selective with their intermediaries.
Lessons from a Fallen Giant
Twelve years later, executives walk free, but the fuel industry in the Canary Islands is different. The bankruptcy of OW Bunker involved millions of dollars in claims and jeopardized the global supply chain. Today, in 2026, the Port of Las Palmas looks to the future with green hydrogen, but in its offices, the memory of that 2016 remains when an English court ruled that, at sea, fuel can be consumed before being paid for, but debts never evaporate.
News written by José L. Jiménez. Edited and verified by Pedro Marrero. Information cross-checked without institutional filters. This analysis has not been funded by official advertising nor conditioned by lobby interests.
