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[Brian60]

These 3 built for ASL and completed in 2014. They have never been to sea and have been cold stacked (supposedly hermetically sealed) ever since - hoping that somebody would step in and buy them. I guess they will eventually find their way to a breakers yard shortly, built for North Sea use, this is an area already saturated with offshore craft - too many ships not enough work anymore.

[Martin (Admin)]

Really?  Where did you hear that from?   

[derekwarner]

Brian...I am not suggesting we commence a blame game investigation, however am pleased I do not have a share allocation in Ship Building in my superannuation portfolio

"too many ships not enough work anymore" ..... commercial interests that commit funds for new Plant Construction [including ship building] look at a great number of financial scenarios prior to allocating the $$

The Supply and Demand look at futures and are the ones we simple folk understand.......so what happened?

Demand for fossil fuel has not diminished.....

Corporate greed or Corporate plain & simple bad planning come to the top of the murky mess that is leaking multi millions of $ in shareholders investments

Even the giant Moller-Maersk Group are shedding newish shipping tonnage at a great rate 

Derek

[Brian60]

Derek they were boom times, the offshore industry knew no limits, then as the squeeze of 2008's global crash hit home, those operators in the North Sea found it was cheaper to bring in companies from India and the far east who worked for basically nothing - the UK had a couple of ships impounded in their ports for not paying their Indian and Indonesian crews any wages at all for over a year. Eventually the crews who were living on charity aboard the impounded ships were flown home and the ships sold off to pay some of the bills by UK authorities. One was in Great Yarmouth another in Scotland, here's one of the reports about it from the BBC....

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-norfolk-38320833

Also another photo, 10 of Bourbon Offshores ships tied up and in cold storage in Batam, the port where those above are also cold stacked.

Martin the first photo comes from a forum for offshore merchant seamen, its all been doom and gloom on there for several years now.

[derekwarner]

I understand all of this Brian........

However the demand for fossil fuel has not diminished.....BP & Royal Dutch Shell still use an increasing number of support fleet vessels in our Global Oceans ......these same Companies still make disclosed and non-disclosed profits  .....

So why were these fleets of support vessels built?

Derek

[Brian60]

As I said Derek, they were built by companies like Bourbon, Vos, Maersk because of anticipated markets. When the global crash happened, everyone tightened their belts. The oil companies looked for cheaper options than what was on offer from the european shipping companies.   

Say Maersk had a support vessel and it was costing the oil company 50.000€ a day to contract. Companies based in India and the far east bought up old ships, crewed them at their day rates and undercut to say 20.000€ a day to the oil companies. This left many european ships and crews idle as cheaper crews came in for the work. Health and safety and seaworthiness means nothing to these contractors, nor it seems the oil companies!

Think of it this way. a european seaman on 350€ a day, an indonesian on 40€ a day, guess which the oil companies went for? at 40€ this is a fortune for an indonesian worker. Unlike Australia, the US and Canada who protect their seaman by insisting on local crews, this does not really happen in europe.

Re reading your last post, is there some confusion? support vessels are owned by independent operators and are contracted by the oil companies - at the cheapest rate they can get. It seems even the oil companies are saving money on contractors, or should that be increasing profits at the expense of contractors?

[derekwarner]

I have no misunderstanding or confusion Brian...............Derek

[Brian60]

Oh and then there is this....

https://www.facebook.com/MaritimeEducationForSeafarer/videos/732786290178512/?hc_ref=ARQEY-73EeeiSK7WMAy9XGEMyktungUSUm8gcN7oQmjVORO3Hr5dsJFWoUx8PpsOavQ&fref=gs&dti=340039406041722&hc_location=group

those cheap untrained crews with no experience of safe working. When this video appeared last year the text with it said the seaman escaped relatively unharmed hmmmm! But as I mentioned, health and safety has been abrogated by the oil companies and made the sole responsiblity of the contractee company - who by the looks of this video just don't care! I could explain why this is so wrong and how it should have been done, but the video tells it all.

[Liverbudgie2]

This situation will not improve unless and until it directly affects the oil companies, double hulled tankers were not built or thought of even, until catastrophic groundings and pollution forced their hand. Now no single hull tanker, if there are any, can operate in European and North American waters or many other's for that matter.

Did anybody watch "Mighty Ships" on Tuesday BTW. What horror story that was.

LB

[cos918]

Oh and then there is this....

https://www.facebook.com/MaritimeEducationForSeafarer/videos/732786290178512/?hc_ref=ARQEY-73EeeiSK7WMAy9XGEMyktungUSUm8gcN7oQmjVORO3Hr5dsJFWoUx8PpsOavQ&fref=gs&dti=340039406041722&hc_location=group

those cheap untrained crews with no experience of safe working. When this video appeared last year the text with it said the seaman escaped relatively unharmed hmmmm! But as I mentioned, health and safety has been abrogated by the oil companies and made the sole responsiblity of the contractee company - who by the looks of this video just don't care! I could explain why this is so wrong and how it should have been done, but the video tells it all.

Brian
you video link say it all ,poor chap


john