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A somewhat opinionated commentary on U.S. and
Canadian maritime matters. |
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RFP OUT FOR DISMANTLING OF THREE CARRIERS Now here's an interesting project. The Navy wants a single contractor to dismantle the Forrestal (CV 59), the Independence (CV 62) and the Constellation (CV 64). Read the FBO announcement here. Not many yards have the physical resources to do a job like this, apart from the unique management skills. How much will this cost? $80 million each? Are they worth that much in scrap? Why not give them to our impoverished allies? I guess nobody wants ships that big. Reef them, sink them as targets, take them out into really deep water and pull the plug? Can't do any of those any more - the greenies wouldn't like it. January 27, 2012. CHANGES IN THE NAVY'S SHIPBUILDING PROGRAMS As far as one can tell from Secretary Panetta's statement, the new defense strategy will mean that the Navy's shipbuilding programs will experience the following changes:
Bad news for Austal, but, all in all, it could have been a lot worse. January 27, 2012.
The Delta Mariner hit the Eggner's Ferry (Highway 68) bridge over the Tennessee River last night, taking out two spans of it, fortunately without any casualties. Read the story on WKDZ here. The Delta Mariner is a unique shallow-draft/low-air-draft ship, built by Halter in 1998, which is operated by Foss for Boeing: she generally carries rockets and other stuff from Boeing's plant in Decatur AL down the Tenn-Tom to Mobile and thence to either Cape Canaveral in Florida or Vandenburg AFB in California. See the pictures on Foss' web site here. In this case, she was way upstream of Decatur, not far south of the Tennessee's junction with the Ohio River. January 27, 2012. McCREARY MOVES UP Only three months after joining BAE Systems, Richard McCreary has moved up to become Vice President and General Manager of BAE Systems Southeast Shipyards. Ever the glutton for punishment, he will continue to be VP Commercial Business Development for BAE Systems Ship Repair. Richard replaces Dan Welch, who is retiring. Good move. January 26, 2012.
The Atlantic published a series of pictures yesterday of the TK Bremen, a small cargo ship which grounded on a beach in France last month and which has already been almost completely recycled. No particular message here, just look at these terrific pictures. See them here. In a world in which so many people use a cell phone to take really crappy pictures, it's nice to know that there are still a few real photographers around. January 25, 2012. CAN THE COSTA CONCORDIA BE SAVED? There is a really excellent graphic in the National Post today that addresses the difficulties of salvaging the Costa Concordia. See it here. January 23, 2012. THE COSTA CONCORDIA'S WILD RIDE The Dutch company, QPS, which makes Qastor navigation software, has recreated the doomed ship's track from the AIS data. See it here or go to QPS' web site here. This is astounding. It seems clear that the ship lost power after the initial grounding. It also explains why the damage was on her port side but she ended up lying on her starboard side. As I said earlier, a whole lot of questions arise that are not related to the master's bizarre behavior. January 23/24, 2012.LANDING CRAFT GROUNDED IN MAUI In a welcome contrast to more news of the Costa Concordia, we can report that LCM 8540, built by Rohr in the early 70s, ran up on the beach in Maui earlier this week. Read the story on KITV and see a video here. No word on what her captain was doing at the time. January 20, 2012. ANOTHER REFINERY CLOSING The 500,000-bpd Hess/PDVSA refinery on St. Croix, for which the six Jacksonville-class ITBs were built, will close next month. Read the announcement here. January 18, 2012. PRESIDENT OF RINA RESIGNS The fallout has started already. Enrico Scerni, the President of RINA, quit yesterday after saying that everybody knew that captains routinely “take a bow” as they pass Giglio. Read the story in Genova 24 here. January 18, 2012. LEEVAC CHANGES NAMES LEEVAC Industries, the shipyard in Jennings LA, and LEEVAC Shipbuilding and Repair, the shipyard in Calcasieu LA, have consolidated and both are now LEEVAC Shipyards, LLC. Makes sense to me. Read the announcement here. January 17, 2012. COSTA'S GONE I reckon Costa's gone, don't you? They will lose so much business as a result of this fiasco that it would take them years to recover. Carnival won't sit still for that. They will close it down and transfer the ships and routes to one or more of the other subsidiary companies. Without those silly stovepipe stacks, of course. January 17, 2012. SEACOR TAKES OVER TRAILER BRIDGE Seacor and two investment companies are bailing out Trailer Bridge in return for control. Read the report in the JoC here. This is excellent news. Now, how about taking over Horizon too? January 17, 2012. BLAME THE MASTER, BUT ........ So they are going to put the blame for the Costa Concordia disaster on her Captain. Fair enough. But there may be just a few technical questions that need answering, don't you think? Yeeeeees. It will be interesting to watch Carnival and Fincantieri and RINA dancing around questions that are nothing to do with the Captain's alleged negligence, such as the power failure and the widespread flooding and the crew's training and the lack of emergency drills and probably a bunch more that haven't surfaced yet. January 16, 2012. STACKLEY GOES AFTER HII Reuters reports that ASN Sean Stackley is leaning on HII to get the costs of the CVN and LPD programs under better control. Read the story here. I particularly like this quote from HII's Mike Petters: "Until those ships (the LPDs) are gone, and until we get Avondale wound down and closed, we sleep with one eye open on all those programs." Read the ASN's full statement on DefPro Daily here. January 15, 2012. FIVE-YEAR-OLD CRUISE SHIP WRECKED How exactly could a post-Panamax cruise ship - the Costa Concordia, built by Fincantieri in 2006 at a cost of over $500 million - be so totally and catastrophically wrecked, with such terrible loss of life? What was a ship with a 26-foot draft doing there? What happened to two-compartment subdivision? What happened to all the back-up systems? Why did she roll to starboard when the gash appears to be in the port side? What have Costa Line (owned by Carnival), Fincantieri and RINA (the Italian class society) got to say for themselves? Could such a disaster happen here? In the islands? In the Florida Keys? In Alaska? How can we say that it couldn't? Of course it could and in fact nearly did, only two weeks ago, when the MSC Poesia, also with a 26-foot draft, ran onto a reef in the Bahamas that was in 15 feet of water. Read about that here. January 14/15, 2012. DOWNSIZING GOVERNMENT It seems from today's news that the Democrats now agree with the Republicans that the federal government's too big and needs to be streamlined. So this would be a good time, would it not, to act on my oft-repeated suggestion that we should merge all the various departments and agencies that are involved with the commercial marine industry and its infrastructure? I'm talking about the civil activities of the U.S. Coast Guard and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, plus the Maritime Administration, the Federal Maritime Commission, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and NOAA. Let's put them all in the Department of the Interior, with an Assistant Secretary in charge. January 13, 2012. NAVY ACCEPTS LORENZEN Military Sealift Command reports that the range instrumentation ship Howard O. Lorenzen, (T-AGM 25), has finally been accepted. Read the announcement here. Built by VT Halter Marine to replace the 60-year-old Observation Island, she was rejected back in June, but has apparently now been fixed. January 13, 2012. MARAD GETS AN EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Reliable sources say that Joel Szabat, who is currently Deputy Assistant Secretary for Transportation Policy, has been appointed Executive Director of MARAD. This is odd, because there is no such position in MARAD and there are several senior vacancies in the existing organization structure, but no doubt all will be made clear soon. Mr. Szabat appears to be highly qualified - read his bio here - just not qualified for a job in MARAD. Never a dull moment. January 11, 2012. COAST GUARD ACADEMY NEEDS MORE SPACE According to the local press, the Coast Guard Academy needs to expand its facilities but the city of New London doesn't want to accommodate it. Read the story on WTNH here. I suppose that it's only a matter of time before someone suggests that the Coast Guard Academy might merge with the Merchant Marine Academy. Not me, of course. January 9, 2012. HISTORIC 75-YEAR-OLD YACHT SINKS The 93-foot Gypsy Queen, built on City Island in 1936 by Henry B. Nevins, has sunk in Steamboat Slough, near Everett WA. Read the report from Washington State's Department of Ecology here. January 6, 2012. MORE STRANGE NAMES The Secretary of the Navy continues to stir up the old guard with his non-standard approach to the naming of ships. First it was the T-AKEs, the LCSs and the JHSVs: now it's the Mobile Landing Platforms. They will be named Montford Point, John Glenn and Lewis B. Puller. Read the announcement here. Read one blog's reaction to it here. January 6, 2012. A STRATEGIC PLAN FOR KINGS POINT DoT and MARAD have initiated the development of a strategic plan for the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy. Read MARAD's announcement here. Good. Now, how about a new and meaningful strategic plan for an effective Maritime Administration? (Read the current plan, published in 2008, here.) January 5, 2012. NOME TANKER GETS WAIVER The Russian tanker Renda got its Jones Act waiver and is on its way from Dutch Harbor to Nome. Read the story on KTUU here. January 5, 2012.
Alaska Longline Company has ordered a new factory longliner - similar to the one on the right - for service in the Bering Sea. The 136-foot Jensen-designed vessel will be built by Alaska Ship & Drydock and delivered in 2013. It appears to be the first to be ordered as a result of the recent changes to the American Fisheries Act, which are expected to stimulate renewal of the Alaskan fleet: read a summary of the changes here. January 3, 2012. KEPPEL O&M GETS INTO THE WIND TOO AMFELS' parent, Keppel O&M, has bought half of the Norwegian company OWEC Tower AS, which designs offshore wind towers. Read the press release here. Will we see them built in Brownsville? January 3, 2012.
It's interesting to see Pirelli's cable ship Giulio Verne working in the Hudson River. It's not long since we had cable layers in the U.S. fleet but, except for the Navy's Zeus, (T-ARC 7) - built by NASSCO in 1985 and primarily a cable repair ship - they've all now been flagged out or sold. By my count, there are 68 large cable ships in the world fleet, including seven that belong to a U.S. company - TE Connectivity (formerly Tyco). January 3, 2012. |
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A WISH LIST FOR 2012: Some developments to push for in the New Year:
There's a bunch more things we should be doing, but these will do for starters. Don't hold your breath. January 1, 2012. |
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THE YEAR IN REVIEW STORY OF THE YEAR:
GOOD THINGS THAT HAPPENED IN 2011:
BAD THINGS THAT HAPPENED IN 2011:
SHIPYARD OF THE YEAR: DAKOTA CREEK INDUSTRIES
OTHER INTRIGUING DEVELOPMENTS IN 2011:
INTERESTING PERSONNEL CHANGES IN 2011:
INTERESTING CORPORATE DEALS IN 2011:
INDUSTRY LEADERS WHO DIED IN 2011:
Norm Lemley, USCG officer and SES leader, expert on marine safety Keith Tantlinger, the inventor of the shipping container SIGNIFICANT SHIPBUILDING CONTRACTS IN 2011:
SIGNIFICANT SHIPS DELIVERED IN 2011:
SIGNIFICANT SHIPS SOLD FOR RECYCLING IN 2011:
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CHEMICAL PIONEER IN VERACRUZ I'm told that one of the three remaining single-hull tankers in the Jones Act fleet, US Shipping's 35,000-dwt Chemical Pioneer, is in the TNG shipyard in Veracruz, being made OPA-compliant. The Chemical Pioneer, you will recall, was created in 1983 by Newport News SB by attaching a new forebody to the stern of the AEIL containership Sea Witch, which had been wrecked in 1974 in a collision with the Esso Brussels, in New York Harbor. The Veracruz shipyard, once operated by McDermott, seems to be getting popular: Rand recently sent the Tina Litrico there to convert her into the Canadian-flag Tecumseh. December 31, 2011.
The icebreaking Russian tanker Renda, pictured in that stunning photograph on the right, is currently on her way to Nome with a cargo of Korean fuel oil. Nome's PBS station, KNOM, reports, however, that the Renda was unable to get any gasoline in the Far East and wants to call at Dutch Harbor to pick some up. Listen to KNOM's story here. This, of course, would require a Jones Act waiver. December 29, 2011. |
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SEACOR GETS INTO THE WIND Seacor has bought Windcat Workboats, a Dutch company with a fleet of 30 windfarm service vessels, (WSVs?). Read the report here and visit them here. Good move. Haven't I been pushing this market sector? December 28, 2011.
The Navy has accepted delivery of the sixth San Antonio-class ship and the second to be built in Pascagoula, the future USS San Diego, (LPD 22). There she is on the right, looking good. Read the Navy's calm and rational announcement here and Ingalls' hysterical raving here. December 24, 2011.
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Moran Towing has ordered three more Jensen-designed escort tugs from Washburn & Doughty, like the one pictured on the right (in New Orleans). Read Jensen's announcement here. December 19, 2011.
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SUPERFERRIES TO THE NAVY AT LAST It's almost three years since Hawaii Superferries ceased operations and I first predicted that they would end up in the Navy. (See them tied up in Norfolk here.) So, here, at last. is the language that makes it so, from the Defense Authorization Act of 2012:
(1) M/V HUAKAI. (2) M/V ALAKAI. (b) USE AS DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE SEALIFT VESSELS.—Each vessel transferred to the Department of the Navy under subsection (a) shall be administered as a Department of Defense sealift vessel (as such term is defined in section 2218(k)(2) of title 10, United States Code). December 17, 2011. KIRBY BUYS SEABOATS Kirby has confirmed our report that it has bought the Seaboats fleet. The price tag? $42 million cash. Read their announcement here. The three 80,000-bbl tank barges - two built by SENESCO, one by VT Halter - will presumably be integrated into the K-Sea fleet, which already has four barges of the same design. December 16, 2011. VIGOR DUMPS MARTINAC Vigor has dumped Martinac Shipbuilding from its ferry-building consortium, replacing them with their own subsidiary in Everett WA. Read the story in the Tacoma News Tribune here. I guess that's one shipyard that's not on Vigor's list of potential acquisitions. December 15, 2011. CONOCOPHILLIPS LEADS THE WAY IN THE GULF In the first GoM lease sale since the Macondo accident, the feds sold 191 tracts, covering 21 million acres in the Western Gulf, yesterday. The take? $337 million. Read the story on RigZone here. Leading the charge was ConocoPhillips, who will pay $157 million for 75 leases. Thank goodness for another sign of a return to healthy growth in the offshore biz. December 15, 2011. BROWNSVILLE IN GROWTH MODE Despite the difficulties inherent in competing in the same market sector as Trinity Industries and JeffBoat, Brownsville Marine Products - the old Hillman Barge yard in Brownsville PA - is expanding. As a rule, I'm skeptical about the chances of small bargebuilders in a declining market, but these guys really seem to have carved themselves a niche. Read the story in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review here. Their big problem? Finding skilled workers. December 15, 2011. MARAD CONTINUES ITS ATTACKS ON KINGS POINT Last week Matsuda shut down the GMATS program. Read that story here. This week he took away their training ship. Read the story here. What was that about Secretary LaHood wanting Kings Point to return to its former glory? Good grief! December 15, 2011. INTERNATIONAL PUSH FOR SNAME The Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers has elected Peter Noble, Chief Naval Architect of ConocoPhillips, to be its next President, presaging a period of international growth. With so many in our profession tied to the highly specialized needs of the U.S. Navy, we tend to pay insufficient attention to the other things going on in the maritime world. Mr. Noble can be expected to change the emphasis. Even in an industry such as ours, which is much more international than most, few people have as broad experience as this man has. He has already stimulated new SNAME activities in Scandinavia, the Middle East and other maritime centers, and now we can expect SNAME to become a truly international organization, a trend to be welcomed enthusiastically. December 14, 2011. KIRBY BUYING SEABOATS ? Sources say that Kirby is buying Seaboats, the Fall River-based operator with a fleet of five tugs and three tank barges. Can this be true? December 14, 2011. HORIZON IN REVERSE STOCK SPLIT Horizon Lines' stockholders have approved a reverse stock split, under which every 25 of the company's existing shares, each of which is currently worth about 21 cents, will become a single new share, possibly worth about $5.25. Read the announcement here. Well, that solves all their problems. Horizon will instantly become profitable and stockholders will be able to look forward to a glorious future. And all brought about by the wonders of arithmetic! December 12, 2011. NEW ATTACKS ON THE JONES ACT There's a long article in the Journal of Commerce this week about Puerto Rican efforts to roll back the Jones Act. (You have to be a subscriber to read it.) Today we have a similar article from American Shipper, reproduced in the Hawaii Free Press. Read it here. And just yesterday we read about fuel oil being imported to Nome AK in a Russian ship, because no Jones Act operator can get there. One can hardly blame the Puerto Ricans and Hawaiians and Alaskans for being frustrated, but surely the solution is not to roll back the Jones Act, it's to revitalize it, with modern ships, efficiently crewed and competently managed. Now that would be something for MARAD to do, instead of piddling around with coastal shipping, which won't happen unless the big trucking companies want it to happen. December 10, 2011. MORE QUESTIONS ABOUT THE RAND DEAL I am told that Rand also bought the Mary Turner's laid-up sister-ship, the Peggy Palmer, with her tug, the Naida Ramil. Can anyone confirm this? Why would they tell the world that they bought one ATB when they actually bought two? And why do they describe the one they bought as in some way unique, when she has two sister-ships? Very strange people. By the way, the bulker they bought recently, which they also declined to identify and which hasn't yet shown up in the fleet list on their web site, was the Tina Litrico, originally the Sugar Islander, built by Lockheed back in 1973. She is now the Tecumseh and flies the Canadian flag. December 8, 2011. ALASKANS IMPORTING FUEL OIL Would you believe it? The Sitnasuak Native Corporation has contracted for the delivery of 1.5 million gallons of fuel oil from South Korea to Nome, using a Russian tanker. Apparently no U.S. operator can get there. Read the story on KNOM here. December 8, 2011. RAND LOGISTICS BUYS ONE, SELLS ONE Rand Logistics announced today the closing of their acquisition of an unnamed vessel. Read the announcement here. What ship is this? Why not tell us? What's the secret? Of course, it won't be a secret for long, so why not identify it now? Some companies are just dumb. In the meantime, while they are bragging about this acquisition, they don't tell us that they have sold one of their fleet, the 84-year-old Maumee, for scrap. I guess that's supposed to be a secret too. Pearl Harbor Day, 2011. P.S. It's the barge Mary Turner, with the tug Beverly Anderson. ELLIOTT BAY ESCAPES After four wonderful years as a subsidiary of inland barge operator American Commercial Lines, the excellent Elliot Bay Design Group is once again an independent company, but now it's employee-owned. Read their announcement here. December 6, 2011. VIGOR GETS ENTERPRISE INVESTMENT The Portland Business Journal reports that Enterprise Capital LLC has invested $75 million in Vigor Industrial. Read the story here. This comes after Vigor tapped GE Capital for $139 million to help them buy Todd. So, what is Vigor going to buy next? Dakota Creek? Nichols Bros.? BAE's San Francisco shipyard? Alaska Ship & Dock? December 5, 2011. SUNOCO DOESN'T WAIT The Marcus Hook refinery was to have been closed in July 2012 but Sunoco announced on Thursday that it would be closing immediately. Read the story in the Philadelphia Inquirer here. What does this mean for the lightering tugs and barges employed in the Delaware? December 4, 2011. IN TROUBLE AGAIN I'm told that, at a recent management meeting, the President of Ingalls, Irwin Edenzon, a notoriously fiery personality, blew his stack on the subject of "leaks to bloggers". What did bloggers ever do to him? Of course, this column isn't a blog, so he can't have been talking about me. December 3, 2011. INGALLS STARTS ANOTHER BIG RIF A memo today from Ingalls' VP of HR says they want to RIF 500 non-represented employees in Pascagoula and Gulfport (not Avondale) by the end of the year. Read it here. December 2, 2011. MATSON TO BE CUT LOOSE More bad news for the U.S. maritime industry. Alexander & Baldwin has announced plans to split the company, with Matson having to go it alone and all the good stuff remaining in A&B. Not so much a split as a dump. Read A&B's announcement here. Read the report in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser here. Note that Matson is being made to move from Oakland to Honolulu, so they clearly aren't going to be pursuing any significant new business opportunities any time soon. Dreadful. I guess the person to thank for this is this guy Walter Dods, a retired banker who most recently failed to turn around Hawaii Telecon. How did he get to be Chairman of A&B and what qualifies him to be Chairman of the new Matson? December 2, 2011. JONES ACT WAIVERS SNEAK IN The President has signed PL 112-61, the America's Cup Act of 2011, which takes care of that little problem the sailors were having out on the West Coast. But congresspeople being congresspeople, the act doesn't stop there. Of course not. It includes waivers for GD's three 35-year-old LNG carriers; the heavy-lift ship Geysir, (ex-Amazonia), the AHTS Ocean Veritas, (ex-Seabulk Veritas), the 70-year-old ferry Luna and, wait for it, a Chinese dry-dock for Alaska Ship & Dock. Read the language here. So where were our industry's lobbyists on this? December 1, 2011. MARAD RELEASES COASTAL SHIPPING "REPORT" MARAD has released a package of 11 conceptual designs for types of coastal-trading ships, all developed by Herbert Engineering. Read the announcement here and chuckle. This guy Matsuda is a consummate idiot, isn't he? See profiles of the designs here. (Click on an individual profile to get more detail.) There doesn't seem to be any actual report. Anyone seen MARAD's report? Lost, one report. Whether or not this program is actually going anywhere, who knows? Not on an investment of $800,000, that's sure. December 1, 2011. Woops, sorry. There's a link to the actual report at the top of the page with the design profiles. Missed it. |
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