Page 37: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (May 1997)

SHIP REPAIR & CONVERSION

DUBAI:

Tops For Tankers by Alan Thorpe, international editor

Maersk Curlew at Tyne Tees. operates its largest European containership transshipment base. It is believed that Moller has made this move — worth an estimated $14.3 million — following Kvaerner's decision to close Kvaerner Gibraltar, at which a great deal of work on the Moller containership fleet was carried out.

Petroleum Shipping, the Southampton-based headquarters of U.S. oil major Exxon's interna- tional fleet, will resume utilization of

Singapore's Keppel shipyard for the first time in more than two years, following the award of the scheduled general repair of 91,741-dwt,

Bahamian-registered tanker Mexico. This will be the first vessel in the Exxon fleet to utilize

Keppel's Tuas shipyard since a controversial bribery case, which resulted in the conviction of

Exxon's Cees van der Horst for fraud. Exxon had announced, during mid-1996, that Keppel was to be placed back on the quote list of yards in the Singapore area, but the Mexico contract is the first definite order. The ship arrived in the yard during the latter part of March for a four-week stay in a contract market sources estimate to be worth $2 million.

Bremerhaven's Lloyd Werft is still awaiting confirmation of the financial deal to cover the lengthening of cruise vessels Dreamward and

Windward. The owner, Norwegian Cruise Line (NCL), is reportedly working to obtain suitable financing from a German bank.

Meanwhile, the repair of the first in a series of four ships from U.S. owner Lykes Lines, the 44,966-dwt, U.S.-registered containership

Margaret Lykes, has recently been completed at this yard.

Another German yard involved in the conver- sion industry is Papenburg's Meyer Werft.

Work on the conversion of car carrier Ocean

Highway into a specialized livestock carrier for

Kuwait Livestock Co. is almost complete. The

Dubai Drydocks has again topped the world's league table for repairing large tankers. A record year in terms of ship numbers and deadweight tonnage has been recorded by the yard for the fiscal year ending

February 28. The shipyard repaired 182 ships totaling 26.1 millon dwt, compared with the previous best, during FY93, of 160 ships total- ing 22.7 m dwt.

The breakdown of ship types is impressive at the large end of the market with 25 ULCCs (9.3 m dwt) and 47 VLCCs (12.61 m dwt) being dry- docked, by far the largest in both sectors com- pared with any yard throughout the world.

Other ship types included tankers (38 vessels, 2.13 m), bulk carriers (23 vessels, 1.3 m dwt), general cargo vessels (29 vessels, .5 m dwt) and miscellaneous ships (20 vessels, .14 m dwt).

According to the yard's Chief Executive, Ernie Ware, "Because of the increase in the number of big tankers, we were not able to carry out the same number of multiple dockings as in previous years, but we still managed, with the help of our new floating dock, to han- dle some 110 smaller tankers, bulk carriers, general cargo vessels, etc., totaling 4.14 m dwt."

During the past few years, Dubai

Drydocks has dominated the repair market involving the westbound trade out of the Persian Gulf and is now penetrating the eastbound mar- ket, which for so long was the tradi- tional market for the Singapore repair yards. This has led to reduced turnover figures in Singapore as well as reorganizations such as the recent announcement of the Sembawang/

Jurong Shipyard merger.

Meanwhile, Bahrain's ASRY has received a contact to convert two 133,752-dwt, Petrobras-owned ore/oil carriers into specialized off- shore shuttle tankers. The 1980- built Mafra is to undergo a 37-day alongside conversion, and 1981-built

Marau is to undergo conversion and drydocking work, taking 21 days to complete (eight days in drydock).

One of the more interesting news items from the ship repair industry of late has been the decision by

Danish shipowning giant AP Moller to purchase a 200,000-dwt capacity floating dock from Kiel, Germany, based HDW. This dock is one of the largest floating docks worldwide, and the company will reportedly reposition the unit in the Spanish

Port of Algerciras, where Moller

May, 1997 47