Stoichevski, William
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OPC: Making Naval History
In September, 2016, an U.S. shipyard and the Canadian design business of an Italian-owned Norwegian shipyard won the largest vessel procurement contract in U.S. Coast Guard history. Now, Eastern Shipbuilding will build nine — and possibly many more — Vard Marine designs in its Panama City, Fla., shipyard. Early impressions are of a unique vessel not so unlike comparable European designs by Vard Holdings or parent company Fincantieri.
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A Time to Build & Refit
The aging Pacific Northwest fishing fleet is either undergoing or about to undergo a long-overdo upgrade, judging by a major economic report commissioned by the Port of Seattle. Fisheries managers, seafood suppliers, yards and the supply chain all hope an accompanying surge in ship finance “lifts all boats”. For now, the newbuild count is growing apace, slowed just a bit by owners opting for major retrofits amid rich fish harvests.
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Offshore Innovation: A Real ‘Riverboat’
Central Asia is a booming oil region not far from the Persian Gulf. Energy companies ply the big lake to rack up staggering barrel counts at elephantine oilfields with names like Tengiz (Kazakhstan) or Kashagan (Azerbaijan). Painstaking, oil-fueled nation-building is underway across an oil province, where very shallow water hinders plant and equipment moves by platform supply vessels. Until now — new module-carrying vessels…
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A Rising Sun of Change
“No new fishing vessel has been (added) during the period,” says the email we get from Japan’s largest seafood company, Maruha Nichiro Corp. A year earlier, they had bought shares in New Zealand outfit, Sanford, which had just chartered a Nordic-looking vessel. Seafood rival, Nissui, had just done the same, buying New Zealand and Nordic. That all happened after the Naval Architect’s Society of Japan said a vessel based on the Icelandic design of Reykjavik’s Navis was its Ship of the Year.
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The (Battery) Power Play
This is historic, we tell ourselves, as PBES founder Brent Perry walks us around his still labor-intensive “battery factory” in the heart of Norway, from where ship owner capital controls half of the world’s offshore tonnage. Perry, a shipbuilder himself, has chosen to house his first production center here in the haunt of another ship builder, Selfa Arctic, whose move north left for Perry a young cadre of college-educated workers.
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In Demand: Hoegh LNG’s Sveinung Stoehle
Satisfied with the recent opening of a new floating LNG import terminal in Turkey plus contract successes in Africa and Asia, Hoegh LNG CEO and president, Sveinung Stoehle, cautiously lets us into his stylish Oslo offices for a bit of “disclosure”. The Hoegh business model is winning out, and now six floating storage and regasification units, or FSRUs, are in operation with four newbuilds on the way.
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The New Offshore Reality
Swedbank’s chief economist, Harald Andreassen, isn’t “too hopeful” about the long-term prospects for the oil price, but then again, “I’m less certain of this than I’ve ever been as an economist,” he told a floating production conference in Oslo. After two-and-half years of oil-price collapse followed by layoffs in the thousands; stacked oil rigs and order freezes for offshore shipping, price insecurity itself is a partial expression of confidence.
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A Hybrid Drive’s Digital Landscape
Hybrid drive and potential fuel savings are well known — from 10 to 30 percent, according to the sources we’ve written about over the years. Less known, is the potential need to purchase some sort of remote monitoring package to complement that diesel-electric or battery hybrid system from a system operator in order to secure the maximum safety benefits. As the count of system operators offering hybrid drives grows…
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TechnipFMC & the Future of 'Super-profit Oil'
TechnipFMC’s Andersen discusses the way forward now that “super-profit oil” is over. Ann Kristen Andersen heads up oilfield projects as offshore services and equipment supplier TechnipFMC’s managing director for Norway and Russia. She started her job on the first day of February 2017, a month after a merger that changed the company and has already partly changed an industry beginning to ramp up activity with the oil price buoyant at $55 per barrel.
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Earth, Wind & … Fire Protection
Three years ago coatings giant Jotun was buying up real estate for U.S. market access and location savings. The effort to get closer to its shipping and offshore customer base is still underway with research aimed at protecting client assets in frontier areas like the arctic. An R&D expansion at Flixborough in the U.K. and in the Arctic archipelago of Spitsbergen aims to make active the fire response of passive surface treatments.
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Playing Catch: Northern Europe Fisheries Fleet Review
Record hauls of wild fish, an unprecedented return on farmed salmon, finance and subsidy garner new orders, new designs and emboldened suppliers. In Scandinavia, particularly Norway, rich, carefully managed fisheries raise just one question for the commercially minded — which wave of business to ride. A growing number of large and small players are in on the action, as historic profits are heralded up and down the supply chain.
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Ultimate SIM: Kongsberg's Digital Ecosystem
Ship owners can expect a rich digitalized offering from Kongsberg Group after the merger of its software-producing, oil-and-gas technology division; its maritime simulation (SIM) business and the company’s renewable energy department. Kongsberg Digital is the successor to these, and among the new entity’s cloudlike offerings are new ways to learn and train, as well as new SIM business models. Behind it all is the ultimate learning academy…
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Shipbuilding: Mega Yards
The Woodmac report we saw offered us cause for pause — “Strong activity from the (major oil companies)” while “national oil companies have tightened their purse strings.” What Maritime Reporter found, was that national oil companies — nation-builders, for many — are putting their money in affiliate shipyards. The hope of two, new shipbuilding giants is jobs, innovation, national survival and export security.
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Schulte Marine Concept MD Kozdron Talks Shipbuilding
If you are an American thinking Asia for converting a vessel, building a drydock or contracting a medium-sized newbuild, then Krzysztof Kozdron, Managing Director of Germany-based Schulte Marine Concept (SMC), is the man you need to speak to. Easy to talk to, the Shanghai-based naval architect and engineer knows shipbuilding from all sides. Parent company Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement (BSM) has owned and operated ships for 150 years…
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Designer-built Adventure Cruise
The 2016 Polar Code has its first luxury-adventure cruise adherents for the long, new ice-free seasons in the high latitudes. Likewise, many designs winning over owners and explorers target exotic Asia-Pacific destinations. Competition is fierce among “designer-shipyards” seeking to build their designs, but their creations could face fewer hurdles to construction than the designs of independents without a yard.
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Wind Energy Workboats: A US Offshore Build-up
Block Island — U.S.-based Deepwater Wind’s five-turbine, 30-megawatt wind park — was the first. It showed what was possible, what might not have been optimal and how long it all takes. Since then, incentives for onshore-wind have been curbed, while a tax credit for offshore wind has been extended. Wind parks are in the works. States have power companies buying offshore wind energy, and experienced…
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A New Breed of Tug
When markets expand niches are created, goes the logic. For builders of tugs, that market is “floating gas” and the expanding use of liquefied natural gas, or LNG, as a fuel. In support of LNG, there’ll be more oceangoing tug duty — the new floating storage and regasification units, or FSRUs, mean busier LNG carriers, and LNG cargo owners have an interest in tug escorts that share their “carbon footprint”.
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Driver-less Ships: Autonomy in the Maritime Sector
In a show of prototypes, a pod of unmanned sailboats from around the world competes to cross “The Atlantic” test tank in Horten, Norway. Cross the real ocean, and the Sail Bots race similarly challenges scholarly robotic-vessel designers to North America for a bit of station-keeping, collision-avoidance and “cargo moves”. For all, the future seems bright — the first commercial runs of unmanned vessels are underway or scheduled worldwide.
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For Hire: Battery Hybrid PSVs
Systems integrator and equipment maker Rolls-Royce has quietly been adding hybridizing energy-storage packages to a diverse list of vessels. Yet, so, too, has one of its clients — Louisiana-based SEACOR Marine, as it reacts early to tightened emissions and energy-management standards, or EMS, for vessels plying Europe and North America. Fuel savings and energy-company clients seeking green credentials are…
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Fuel Talk: Greener Ships 'Abandoned'
In the immortal words of one Kermit the Frog, “it’s not easy being green.” Nor inexpensive. Offshore ship owners managing the demand “fallout” of the past year and navigating myriad environmental strictures say their leap of faith toward greener fuels has taken its toll. The idealism of a decade ago has eroded, they say, in the face of lost offshore business, especially long-term contracts. Oil company clients that once insisted on high-spec…
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