David Tinsley News

Noble Corporation has reported fourth quarter 2013 net income of $174 million, or $0.68 per diluted share. Results for the fourth quarter included an after tax charge of $36 million, or $0.14 per diluted share, relating to an impairment taken on the FPSO Seillean. Excluding the impairment charge, net income for the fourth quarter would have totaled $210 million, or $0.82 per diluted share. For the third quarter of 2013, the Company reported net income of $282 million, or $1.10 per diluted share, which included after tax gains totaling approximately $63 million, or $0.25 per diluted share.

One of the most enduring business relationships has been reinforced by the Evergreen Group's decision to entrust construction of an extensive new series of post-Panamax containerships to Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. The project is distinguished not only by its scale, in calling for 10 S-class newbuilds of 6,724-TEU to be delivered between September 2005 and the end of 2007, but also by the adoption of the 'Greenship' design concept proposed by Evergreen chairman Dr. Chang Yung-Fa. Through its special attention to pollution prevention, the 'Greenship' approach calls for fuel oil storage to be protectively located within the athwartship bulkheads dividing the cargo holds. "We don't want fuel oil tanks to be located at the sides and at the bottom of the ships," commented Dr. Chang.

While catamaran and multi-hull vessel technology is increasingly being explored for its potential in high-speed military and logistical support applications, Rolls-Royce has unveiled a proposal for a fast naval sealift ship based on a monohull RoPax ferry design. The impulse for developing a vessel type with that rare combination of exceptional speed and relatively high payload capacity originates from the changing emphasis in military support requirements, not least the deployment of rapid response forces to distant areas at short notice. The project has also been driven by a general trend towards faster combatants and the complementary need for a faster speed of back-up and replenishment. The Rolls-Royce proposal entails a 4,000-dwt vessel of 581 ft.

As the first containerships officially credited with capacities topping 8,000-TEU, the series of newbuilds ordered at the start of the year by Vancouver-based Seaspan for long-term charter to China Shipping Group embodies a design, which has been the subject of the most thorough structural analysis. The boxship sector has always been characterized by a propensity for driving developments to the limits of technical possibility. Its outstanding structural safety record over the years is testament to the industry's unflagging efforts to ensure long-term vessel integrity in combination with advancing scale. The considered technical approach expressed in current projects in the 8…

Confounding the skeptics who said the 70,300-gt Queen Elizabeth 2 would be the last transatlantic liner ever built, the 150,000-gt Queen Mary 2 is set to make her service debut in January 2004, signifying a $780-million investment in a luxury passenger ship structurally engineered for the North Atlantic. Destined to uphold and revitalize the Cunard liner tradition, the 30-knot QM2 will break new ground in passenger ship technology, while incorporating lessons learned with the 1969-commissioned QE2. The challenge of fulfilling an extremely tough schedule in a notoriously harsh environment, and of meeting rising customer expectations as to service quality, comfort and reliability in all conditions, permeates every aspect of the technical design.

A study commissioned by Lloyd's Register and conducted by Ocean Shipping Consultants has determined that major investment will be required in feeder and shortsea containerships through to the end of the decade, in support of surging development in the trade and in the size of the deepsea mainline vessels. Over 25 percent of today's worldwide boxship fleet, and nearly 60 percent of the present orderbook, is in the post-Panamax category, and it appears ever more likely that the industry will see the first 12,500-TEU vessels before 2011. "The demand for big ships will clearly lead to higher demand for transhipment," said David Tozer, Lloyd's Register's Business Manager, Container Ships.

An advance in hydrodynamic design has been endorsed by Norwegian energy group Statoil, as the prospective charterer of an innovative newbuild intended for coastwise distribution of oil products. The 4,200-dwt vessel contracted by Bergen Tankers will employ a diesel mechanical propulsion layout based on twin azimuth thrusters incorporating 'pulling' propellers. The project represents the first application of the Norwegian-developed Azipull system in the tanker market, and champions the principle of redundancy, conferred through the use of two, independent propulsion lines. The engineering and propulsion arrangements selected for the 90m coastal tanker have been shaped by exacting requirements as to maneuverability, design efficiency, safety and transport service dependability.

Vietnam's fledgling shipbuilding industry has raised its international profile by entering into a seminal agreement with the UK's Graig Group for the construction of a series of double-hulled bulk carriers. Cardiff-based Graig's bold move, potentially entailing 15 vessels of the Diamond 53 handymax type, draws on its experience in assigning a similarly extensive program, for 14 examples of the 53,000-dwt design, to Chinese yards. For the industrially-ambitious Vietnamese, who have already made substantial investments in modern shipbuilding equipment and practises, the Graig deal has particular appeal not only for its promise of serial production of one of the most well-considered, future-oriented bulker designs, but also for the broader package which the firm brings to the project.

Power systems specialist Rolls-Royce now derives nearly $1.5 billion of total annual sales of $8.7 billion from the marine market, and an important element of its growth strategy in the marine domain is the development of its electrical capabilities, products and technology. The increasing use of electrical drives and other sub-systems, and a move towards highly automated, integrated shipboard networks, is evident in both the commercial and naval sectors, in the technology-intensive, specialized vessel categories which form the group's heartland business areas. The success of electrical power and propulsion systems in application to high capacity cruise vessels has proved to be one of the most significant technological developments in commercial shipping over the past decade and a half…

German engineers have strengthened the Schottel offering through the development of a propulsor which melds technical design and performance features of the company's proprietary, azimuthing Rudderpropeller series with those of electric podded drives. The resulting hybrid system, known as the Schottel Combi Drive (SCD) and distinguished by its compactness and inboard placement of the integral electric motor, has been designed for unit power applications in the 1,900 to 3,800-kW range. The innovative new product employs proven mechanical elements from the Rudderpropeller design and the latter's optimized-efficiency, Twin-Propeller (STP) version.

Liner shipping is traditionally a cyclical business, subject to dramatic peaks and troughs and sudden changes in fortune in individual trade lanes. Today's ebullience among all sectors of container shipping, including its various intermediaries, compares starkly with the situation in the latter part of 2001, when the market had hit a low point and the prophets of doom were out in force. Yet, only a year before that, market analysts had been talking of inexorable growth in seaborne containerized transport. Right now, the industry exudes confidence that the bull market for deepsea carriers will continue through 2004, after what proved generally to be a boom time for the liner shipping world last year, on the back of a rebounding world economy.

Increased interest in ice-classed tankers has been fostered to a great extent by the emergence of former Soviet Union (FSU) states as important players in the oil market. The FSU collectively, but with particular reference to Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, has emerged as the engine of global oil supply growth. Since 1996, FSU output has grown by around 50-percent, approaching the highs achieved during the Soviet regime. The fact that a substantial part of the production has been made available for export has key implications for sea borne transportation logistics and opportunities. Special challenges are presented for tanker design and operations because of the harshness of the environments in which the trade has to be conducted.

With TBT paints on the endangered list due to environmental concerns, shipowners must find an alternative method to keep ships coated and efficiently clean. Jotun believes it has the answer. Bringing her first cargo to Europe following completion by Samsung Heavy Industries, the 306,000-dwt British Pioneer has given new expression to environmental-consciousness in the crude oil transportation sector. While the security of her 2.1-million barrel cargo containment has been enhanced by the compulsory double hulling, the non-mandatory continuation of the double shell aft better safeguards the bunker spaces, reducing the risk of fuel oil spillage in the event of the aftship being breached.

This edition of our annual World Yearbook mirrors the changes sweeping the maritime markets within which you operate. While there are traditional departments and sections with which you have become accustomed to and comfortable with, there is also a good deal of space dedicated to extolling the values of emerging e-commerce technologies, a topic that I’m reasonably sure is far from the theoretical comfort level enjoyed by many owners and operators in the domestic and international maritime markets. The dot com craze, which has swept consumer markets in the U.S. and abroad has fully infiltrated the maritime niche, and there is currently a staggering rush by companies large and small…

German industry is doing much to advance the development and application of fuel cell technology, and is responsible for many of the initiatives launched so far in the marine sector. Although skeptics in the commercial shipping domain discount the chances of a substantial uptake of fuel cell power aboard mercantile traders in the foreseeable future, there is a growing realization of the long-term possibilities offered by the technology, albeit in specialized areas. Use in auxiliary plant may hold out certain opportunities in some types of vessel. Minimal environmental impact, due to an absence of the noxious emissions produced by internal combustion engines…

In a further display of hard-earned competitiveness tempered by pure industrial will, Flensburger Schiffbau-Gesellschaft has brought another export shipbuilding contract to Germany at a time of ever-more determined incursions by oriental yards into the European market. The Flensburg yard's sealing of a deal with Belgian shipping and logistics company Cobelfret for two container/RoRo (ConRo) vessels has strengthened its standing as a builder of large, RoRo equipped vessels for demanding shortsea trades. The Cobelfret newbuilds have been dubbed the Humbermax type, having been optimized for North Sea service linking the company's new Killingholme terminal on Humberside, in eastern England, with Zeebrugge and Rotterdam in the Low Countries.

Swelling U.S. interest in fostering the development of coastwise shipping may be set against the backcloth of an anticipated 55 percent growth in demand for domestic freight transport over the period 2000-2010. Aside from its breathtaking scale, one of the most remarkable aspects of the U.S. projection is its similarity to the forecast, 50-percent increase in European road freight volume within the same timeframe. U.K.-based technical consultancy BMT Nigel Gee and Associates, no stranger to the North American market, has prepared a high-speed RoRo freight and passenger carrier design for SeaBridge, a new company founded by Mediterranean shipping and North American trucking interests. While offering a solution to U.S.

Corporation's production network. As the one-time Grandi Motori Trieste(GMT) works, a symbol of Italian industrialization in the 1970s, the factory has been the subject of far-reaching organizational change since the Finns took charge. It has emerged as a much leaner, increasingly efficient builder of marine diesels. Cessation of engine production at other Wärtsilä plants in recent years has imbued Trieste with additional manufacturing responsibilities, and its strengthened role as a European supplier to the international market has assumed greater significance in the light of the continuing shift of global shipbuilding and marine production activity to the orient. engine building centers maintained by the Finnish group.

When two-year-old Janet McAllister christened her namesake in New York last month — the 5,000-hp, Eastern Shipbuilding-built Janet M. McAllister — a resurgence of maritime pride was evident at the South Street Seaport that had been missing from New York for years. The symbolism of a new generation from one of America's great maritime families inaugurating the most powerful tugboat in arguably the country’s most historic harbor was not lost. The event drew a healthy crowd of industry personnel, people with a vested interest in the boat or the storied towing company. But just as interesting was the throng of New York natives and tourist fixated on the event, as the vessel was put through her paces.

Considering the over abundance of conferences and exhibitions that grace the marine industry’s business calendar, I am pleased to report on the activities of the Ship Operations Cooperative Program (SOCP), which most recently met on the scenic campus of the Massachusetts Maritime Academy. SOCP — which is a business/government partnership — provides a fresh dialogue among industry players with discussions focused on real-world issues and solutions. June’s meeting featured a number of topics, from alternative fuel technologies to a ferry operator panel, which discussed regulation, training, safety and technology. A more extensive account of the meeting will be found in MR/EN’s August edition, U.S. Report.

As a fitting recognition of Poland's evolving shipbuilding tradition and solid, maritime technical skills, a development dubbed the 'virtual shipyard' has been established in Gdansk by Det Norske Veritas (DNV). The classification society's reinforced technological commitment to Poland has also been encouraged by the competitive environment which now exists there, and which has fired the transitional economy. DNV's move taps an abundant resource of naval architects and endorses the maritime infrastructural role played by the Technical University of Gdansk, where the Norwegian classification society has set up its Nauticus Modeling Center (NMC).

In a bold move to simplify and expedite the entire ship surveying process, Germanischer Lloyd (GL) has implemented a new, information technology (IT) tool for use by its stations around the world. Heralded as a revolutionary step forward in surveying, the customer-driven initiative is known as TRON, and is intended to replace complicated, time-consuming correspondence with a largely electronically-based surveying process linked to the GL intranet. The value of TRON should be best realized when used in conjunction with 'fleet online', GL's Internet portal. The powerful new instrument of service and operations enables the necessary survey information…

Quality, quality, quality. Ship and boat owners seeking to build a long-term profitable marine business are making this factor the cornerstone of decision making. Whether it be mandated by new legislation, or simply chosen as a marketable competitive advantage, companies that own and operate vessels should be demanding that everything — from vessel design, to equipment and systems, to personnel training techniques — are of the highest quality, or more accurately, the highest quality within the company’s budget. Marine companies in 2001 and beyond are seemingly in a perpetual battle to prove that their company, their industry, is a quality run operation, and an operation that is the most cost-effective, environmentally sound method of moving cargo, as compared to air, road, and rail.