Page 40: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (January 1998)

SHIP REPAIR & CONVERSION

VLCC Prospects Spawn New Facilities by Alan Thorpe, International Editor

Competition in the VLCC repair market will again heat up with three new docks capable of dry- docking such ships to come on stream during the next two years.

The locations are Shanghai Guan, in mainland China, due to begin operations during the end part of 1998; a new repair and building facility being built by South

Korea's Hyundai Mipo Dockyard (HMD) in Vietnam (1998/99), and

Rowdock, a project underway in

Richard's Bay, South Africa (2000).

There has been some movement in the floating production, storage and offloading FPSO conversion market in Spain and Singapore.

Astilleros Espanoles' Cadiz

Shipyard has signed another con- version contract with Brazilian oil major Petrobras, involving the 267,577-dwt Panamanian VLCC

Eastern Strength, which was for- merly owned by World-Wide

Shipping Managers Ltd.,

Bermuda, and will be renamed

Petrobras 47. The work is expect- ed to take 12 months, followed by one month in transit and two months of installations. The work will include a mooring and load turret system, new auxiliary engines, emergency generators and engine and deck equipment, fabrication of helideck, prefabrica- tion, fitting, final tests of all equipment and systems, and increasing the units accommoda- tion block to a new capacity of 80 persons.

Meanwhile, Petrobras is rumored to have placed two con- tracts with Singapore's Jurong

Shipyard Ltd. (JSL) for the con- version of two of its own VLCCs to be converted to a FSU and a

FPSO, respectively.

Norway's Bergesen is to convert two recently delivered 103,000- dwt multi-purpose tankers into (FPSO) units, while also convert- ing the 103,000-dwt tanker new- building into a drillship. The work is being spread between yards in the U.K., Norway and

Singapore. All three tankers have been built by Korea's Samsung

Heavy Industries (SHI). The lead vessel, Berge Hugin was delivered earlier this year and will be con- verted at the Aker McNulty yard on Tyneside in the U.K. Munin, delivered from Korea in the sum- mer, has now arrived at JSL for conversion into a FPSO, while the third vessel, Odin, upon delivery from SHI will sail for Norway's

Offshore & Marine facility, outside

Stavanger, for conversion into a drillship.

Malta Drydocks has successfully completed, on schedule, the latest refit carried out by Sun Cruises, part of Airtours, involving the 23,149-grt cruise vessel Carousel, formerly the Nordic Prince. The 1971-built Carousel refit has cost

Sun Cruises some $7 million to complete, with the shipyard's involvement being some $2 mil- lion. The main project has involved the removal of six diesel generating sets and replacing them with five larger Deutz/MWM type TBD 444 L6 sets, which have a total output of some 4,500 kW.

The new generating units were tested while in Malta Drydock's largest drydock to an output of approximately 110 percent. When sailing, only three sets out of the five will be utilized to supply the vessel's hotel requirement. The installation has also allowed the ship to move to a single fuel basis.

Canada's Port Weller Dry Docks, a division of Canadian

Shipbuilding & Engineering Ltd. (CS&E), has been awarded a $20 million conversion project from

Ontario's Algoma Central

Corporation, for the conversion of the 32,420-dwt Canadian-regis- tered bulk carrier Algowest. To be converted to a self-unloading bulk carrier, the contract is in addition to an $85 million fleet moderniza- tion program for the 23-vessel

Algoma fleet. The 1982-built

Algowest was scheduled to arrive at Port Weller in December, and will be delivered in June 1998.

Conversion work is still continu- ing at Poland's Gdansk Shiprepair

Yard - Remontowa (GSY -

Remontowa) onboard the 58,327- dwt tanker Petrotroll, which is being converted to a shuttle tanker. Work includes the fabrica- tion of two new compartments (bowthruster room forward and power plant STB side stern); the overhaul of machinery and electrics; the installation of a new tank measurement system; the mounting of new bowthruster and generating sets; and the installa- tion of dynamic positioning sys- tem. The vessel is owned by

Neptune Heavy Lift AS.

South Shield's Tyne Dock

Engineering (TDE) has been awarded the contract to convert geophysical research vessel Geo

Pacific, built in Poland, into a seis- mic survey ship for Norwegian owners Fugro-Geoteam AS. The contract, valued at $4 million, will provide a base workload for the yard for the next five months, securing jobs of the current work- force and staff of 150 and creating an additional 150 jobs throughout the period of the contract.

Birkenhead's Cammell Laird has recently been awarded the upgrading contract onboard

Denholm Ship Management's 3,060-dwt Bahamas seismic sur- vey/research vessel Simon

Labrador. The project, which was scheduled to commence during mid-December for a 10-week peri- od, involves modernization work, prefabrication of a new stern and modification of all decks.

The sale of Bethlehem Steel's repair company BethShip

Sparrows Point Yard has now been completed with Veritas Capital

Fund, the New York merchant banker, having reportedly paid $20.3 million for the repair facili- ty

Veritas immediately renamed the shipyard operating company

Baltimore Marine Industries (BMI). It is understood that the

State of Maryland agreed to sup- port the sale of the yard by provid- ing a $4 million loan, of which $1 million would become an outright grant to BMI if it hires 875 work- ers within three years. The new union deal for yard employees reduced their hourly wage by $0.75, to about $12.75 per hour from what Bethlehem Steel had paid, but in return the workers will own 10 percent of BMI shares.

BMI has already won some sig- nificant contracts including

Norwegian Cruise Line's 32,396- grt Panamanian cruiseship Royal

Majesty, which was renamed

Norwegian Majesty.

Bahrain's Arab Shipbuilding &

Repair Yard (ASRY) has experi- enced solid demand for its services during the third quarter of this year, and revenue is ahead for the first three quarters compared with the same period in 1996. Overall, shiprepair sales were 15 percent ahead of budget for the nine- month period and 22 percent 40 Maritime Reporter/Engineering News