Safest tanker profits from fears

hailed as the world’s safest tanker, “Wappen von Hamburg”, has gone into day-to-day trading in Northern Europe and owner Wappen Reederei in Hamburg said it expected to do good business, given the current climate surrounding tanker shipping.
Wappen Reederei MD Günther Kordts said the 8,000 DWT Romanian-built newbuilding, first of a series of six 116.4 m long SCOT (Safety Chemical Oil Tanker) sister ships, had generated enormous interest since entering Baltic and North Sea service in December carrying lube oil from Tallinn to Antwerp. “We are trading on a day-to-day basis”, Kordts said. “We are not looking for time-charter business.”
The ship, built at Damen’s Galati Shipyard in Rumania, was being followed by “Wappen von Berlin” and by “München”, “Dresden”, “Bremen” and “Leipzig” up to the end of 2003. Kordts said all the ships were being completed nearly two months earlier than planned. The SCOT ships boast 100 per cent engine and steering redundancy as well as double hulls. They have two separate and independently operating 1,800 kW MAN B&W main engines, two propellers and two rudders. It was known that they were being built but word of their twin engine rooms was kept a secret. Kordts said “we wanted the development to be a surprise”.
It could not have been greater because, coincidentally, “Wappen von Hamburg”, entered service as Europe was urging more of just this type of safe tanker in the wake of the “Prestige” disaster. “I don’t think there would have been so much attention paid to the Wappen ships if the “Prestige” disaster had not taken place”, Kordts said. He added: “I think we have done a lot for tanker safety” but noted the media had failed to understand that much bigger ships of the Wappen type would be needed to meet demand. “Our new ships are ten times smaller than “Prestige” and do not carry heavy oil, rather chemicals and other products”, he said. Their introduction at this time however, he stressed, was directly linked to safety developments. Kordts noted IMO Annex phase-out stipulations from this year for single-hull tankers of 5,000–10,000 DWT and said “that’s the real story behind these ships”.
He recalled there were about 1,000 tankers of 5,000–10,000 DWT in service, of about 7 million DWT, of which 600 were single-hulled.
This year 1.3 million DWT of single-hulled tonnage, or about 160 ships, would no longer be allowed to carry oil, he noted, a situation which, in effect, meant the scrapping of 1.3 million tons “because you cannot live from molasses, water and vegetable cargo alone”, he declared. “Since only 42 new ships of our size are being built, six by us, there is now going to be a shortage of tonnage, the confident Wappen MD declared.”
It had been reported that the new ships were being modelled on the new safety tankers of Germany’s tanker building specialist Lindenau Schiffswerft in Kiel. Kordts acknowledged the close ties with Lindenau but said: “To begin with we thought we would be able to build on a Lindenau safety tanker design but that did not work at all. We trod completely new paths and our ships now have little in common with Lindenau ships.” He explained: “We had to have everything doubled up and separated – from propeller, to engine room, to two completely separated switchboard rooms right up to the bridge – and everything had to go its own, very separate, way so that bottlenecks and fire was avoided.”
Despite the doubling up, the ships curiously also carry more cargo than a similarly sized conventional vessel. Kordts said that had to do with placing smaller engine rooms in the stern and moving tank bulkheads further back.

//Tom Todd

Back to SSG 4, 21 February

Latest update 18-10-2006 8:49

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