Press release from Nordic American Tankers Limited (NYSE

NAT). - Seite 2

NAO as a company is not directly exposed to the price of oil to a significant extent. We are not an oil company. We do not own oil fields or sell oil. We are a Platform Supply Vessel (PSV) company. We service offshore oil installations including oil rigs as necessary parts of their operations. In our main market, the North Sea, existing production accounts for about 80% or so of the work handled by our type of vessel. Existing production in the North Sea is by and large unaffected by movements in the oil price. Startup costs are sunk costs and production breakeven costs are still below the current oil price.

The area that is affected is exploration work. With a low oil price the motivation to seek and develop new fields is reduced. This impacts the remaining 20% of the work typically carried out by our type of vessel. Not all the work will be stopped, and the first vessels to become idle in this market should be the older, smaller and lower specification vessels. NAO has an advanced fleet of top quality vessels in particular from a specification and fuel consumption viewpoint, which keeps NAO competitive in a challenging market.

I believe a useful analogy is to the car servicing and repair business. An economic downturn often slows new car sales. However, the automobile service departments still remain busy keeping existing cars running. The situation must be truly dire before people stop maintaining their vehicles. Just as cars are a necessity for moving around, our PSVs are a necessity for oil production, and in our case that existing production is not going away.

NAO has no debt. Next year, we will take delivery of four newbuildings, boosting earnings and dividend capacity by 67%. This growth is already built in - the proceeds from our June 2014 IPO along with our credit facility make this growth possible using very modest leverage. Compared with some of our competitors, NAO is resistant to volatile markets because of our low cash break-even costs. We are able to generate more cashflow from our vessels in any given scenario because we have minimal interest costs.

Of our current six vessel fleet - three are on long term charters with an average duration of two years before options. The income from these three vessels alone can cover all the costs of the six vessel fleet, thereby safeguarding the company's financial position.

As a rule, I do not comment on the stock price, but I feel it is important to say, both as a NAO shareholder directly and indirectly as the largest shareholder of NAT, which in turn, has a substantial stake in NAO, that I am not worried about NAO's long-term prospects. Investors should rest assured that the management team is working hard to safeguard our ability to pay quarterly dividends - we are better positioned than our competitors. This may seem a bold claim, but we have the strongest balance sheet and the most modern PSV fleet in the industry.