Page 28: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (February 2004)

Far North Endeavor

Just under two years' hence, shipments of liquefied natural gas are due to start from a new terminal sited within the

Arctic Circle in northern Norway. Huge volumes of gas drawn from the Snohvit field deep beneath the Barents Sea will be piped ashore to the Melkoya (Milk

Island) liquefaction and export facilities near Hammerfest, for transportation to

Spain and the USA by a newbuild series of LNG carriers of up to 147,000-cu. m. capacity. Snohvit is the largest-ever industrial project in Norway's Finnmark county, and the initial shipment con- tracts have a 20-year timespan.

Despite a location in the high latitudes at more than 70degN, the Melkoya ter- minal is in ice-free environs due to the benign influence of the Gulf Stream.

Accordingly, the dedicated fleet of LNG tankers will not require ice-strengthen- ing, although the robustness of the type is implicit in the design for a 40-year fatigue life in keeping with North

Atlantic criteria.

K-Sea Acquires Integrated

Tug Barge Unit

K-Sea Transportation Partners L.P. has acquired the 140,000 barrel capacity double-hulled barge S/R New York and the 8,000 h tugboat S/R Everett. This integrated tug barge unit, built in 2000, had been leased by SeaRiver Maritime,

Inc., a subsidiary of Exxon Mobil

Corporation, from a financial institution.

The purchase price of $34 million was financed using available cash and $25 million in borrowings under a new term loan. The new equipment will begin working immediately and is expected to be accretive to K-Sea's distributable cash flow. K-Sea has also signed a new multi-year contract with SeaRiver to uti- lize the unit in Exxon Mobil's petroleum products transportation in the Northeast

United States. The barge has been renamed DBL 140 and the tugboat has been renamed Lincoln Sea. The addition of this integrated tug barge represents a 5.8% increase to the current barrel-car- rying capacity of the K-Sea fleet. By the end of 2004, after the phase-out of cer- tain single-hulled vessels required by the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 and the completion of certain retrofitting proj- ects on other existing vessels, K-Sea's fleet will be approximately 74% double- hulled.

Boosting Deepsea

RoRo Capacity

A major new stage in the reorientation of the Wilh Wilhelmsen fleet has been implemented with the January 2004 arrival in China of the first of five Mark 1 deep-sea, combined RoRo container

February 2004 (ConRo) vessels for reconstruction.

Five ships of the Tourcoing class, dating from 1978 and 1979, are to be rebuilt with a garage section on the weath- erdeck providing capacity for about 1,800 cars. The program has been assigned to Chengxi Shipyard, and fol- lows similar work undertaken on four other ConRos in 2002 and early 2003 by

Nantong Ocean Ship Engineering.

The quintet of quarter-ramped vessels to be processed at Chengxi over the

January-May period are jointly owned by Oslo-based Wilh Wilhelmsen and

Wallenius Lines of Stockholm, and were built to transport heavy cargo and up to 1,800/1,900-TEU containers, with the flexibility also for factory-new cars, trucks and other vehicles and ro-ro freight. The very substantial container capacity on the weatherdeck will be sup- planted by garaging encompassing five new car decks and the main deck level.

The circa 1,800-car intake of the new area will optimize the vessels around the

RoRo concept, and contribute to the fur- ther development of Wilh Wilhelmsen's car carrier business. The adaptation of each vessel is scheduled to take 45-50 days and cost $4.6-million.

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