SPECIAL FEATURE
Tanker Technology

Photo: Bent Mikkelsen

This month’s theme highlights the tanker industry and tanker technology. This is an industry that continously faces increased demands and stricter requirements from customers and society at large. The challenges ahead, not least concerning safety and environment, are many and demanding.

Tanker crew ready for sailing with a cargo of edible oil. Photo: Bent Mikkelsen

Marstal provides knowledge
to tanker seafarers
Marstal Navigationsskole has been a major partner in the expansion of the Danish tanker fleet. Over the last decade thousands of seafarers and also office staff have been on some of the training courses in Marstal to improve their knowledge of handling liquid cargo to sail on a tanker.

Pipelines converging in Primorsk
There have been quite a few press releases over the last five or six years announcing plans to build many liquid cargo terminals on the eastern and southern coasts of the Gulf of Finland. Cargo and port owners wanted to get their share of the growing oil prices, yet some of the projects have been terminated altogether while a number of others have obviously been delayed. In Primorsk, where quays are in place and the cargo turnover is increasing at an unprecedented rate, the state company Transneft delivers oil to the quays.

Maersk Tankers
is expected to grow
Maersk Tankers, the tanker division of the A. P. Møller-Mærsk Group, took delivery of their second LNG carrier in April 2006, adding it to the fleet of 85 units. Maersk Tankers works with a great variety of tankers, ranging from VLCCs of 305,000 DWT to ice-strengthened product carriers of 16,000 DWT. In both these segments new tonnages were added to the fleet in 2006.

The 14,665 DWT product carrier Suula is one of Neste Shipping’s own vessels. Photo: Pär-Henrik Sjöström

Neste Shipping: Focusing
on Russian crude oil
Neste Oil is aiming at using exclusively lower-priced Russian crude oil in its refineries. The import of crude oil as well as the export of products is carried out with its own fleet, consisting of some 30 vessels. Neste Shipping carries crude oil to Neste Oil’s own refineries as well as for third-party customers.

Unique combination carrier
under construction in Gdansk
Polish shipbuilder Remontowa Shiprepair Yard in Gdansk has begun building a combination gas carrier capable of sailing with liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), liquefied natural gas (LNG) as well as ethylene for the Dutch shipowner Anthony Veder Rederijzaken BV of Rotterdam.

Old tankers become
bunker barges in Nigeria
The ban on single hull tankers has sent an armada of older coastal tankers on a voyage to Nigeria in West Africa. A large number of these often well maintained tankers would take another turn in the delivery of oil products in the busy waters off Nigeria. Nigeria has a large oil business off the coast, where huge fleets of bunker barges supply the needs of ships passing by. The bunker business of Nigeria has developed over the recent years, as the oil is relatively cheap not so far from the oil wells, in combination with Nigerian needs of foreign currency.

Photo: Rolf P Nilsson

Donsö – prepared
for future challenges
Although enjoying the current long stretched boom in the oil shipping markets, the shipowning companies on the island of Donsö know that what goes up must come down. When analysts around the world predict a downfall in the market and freight rates cut in half, the islanders are well prepared when the recession eventually arrives.

40 years since the Torrey Canyon disaster – A harsh lesson to raise environmental awareness
The Torrey Canyon was one of the first super tankers. On February 19, 1967, she left Kuwait for order on what was to be her final voyage, carrying a full cargo of crude oil. On March 14, the order came to head for Milford Haven. When the Torrey Canyon approached the Isles of Scilly, a small group of islands that has more shipwrecks per square mile than any other place on earth, the captain decided on a short cut through a gap between the Isles of Scilly and the Seven Stones reef to save time. At 17 knots on March 18, she hit Pollards Rock, ripping open six tanks. The ecological impact was immense.

Built in China for world wide service with focus on calls in icy waters. Photo: GSI

Gotland Carolina: Built for ice
The Gotland Carolina is the first vessel in a series of twelve 53,000 tonnes medium range product tankers with ice class 1 A Super to be delivered. She is the first of four vessels owned by Rederi AB Gotland to join a pool of vessels under the management and operation of Danish Torm. Extensive testing has optimised her hull for a life in ice.