Back to 12/2008

How do you man 9,000 newbuildings?

The offshore sector is facing the same dark clouds on the horizon as the rest of the maritime sectors: How to recruit enough personnel for the coming years.
Like most of the maritime sector there is a sufficient flow of money, in fact better than ever in offshore with an oil price – at the time of writing around USD 124 per barrel – that has never been higher. A lot of new fields and exploration plans have been drawn up in almost every part of the world.

"Dr Martin Stopford reckons that manning
those 9,000 ships on order is the biggest
challenge in shipping today."

Also the offshore segment has its fair share of the world’s order books, which at present is around 9,000 units according to Clarkson Research Services in London.
  The head of Clarkson Research, Dr Martin Stopford, told part of the world maritime press gathered in Hamburg at the end of May, that he reckons that manning those 9,000 ships on order is the biggest challenge in shipping today, much bigger than if markets go down, or if China decides to pull one billion tons of cargo out of the market again, or the growing age of the existing fleet.

Naturally, a number of ships will be sent to recycling during the next five years, when the 9,000 ships are to be delivered, but certainly not at the same rate at which the new ships keep coming to a growing merchant navy. But still the question is where to find the crews. Or maybe the question is how to ‘sell’ seafaring as an attractive choice of occupation for young people.
  It should not be so difficult to explain that a mariner is a highly educated person with a substantial salary and with six months off per year. The nature of seafaring can still put a strain on a ‘normal’ family life, but with Skype telephone, V-Sat and e-mail on board the ships, it is possible for a seafarer to be in frequent contact with his or her home.

There is a dark horse in the Clarkson Research forecast for newbuildings. Around 10 to 15 per cent of the contracts have been signed with unknown shipyards, according to Dr Martin Stopford, or at least shipyards unknown to the Clarkson Intelligence units.
  It could be because the owner has signed with shipyards to be built or groups of industrialists that want to set up a shipyard. It is still uncertain if these ships will be delivered, as it might be so that some of the yard-wannabes have not signed up with suppliers of equipment and therefore are unable to deliver any ships.

Coming back to the offshore sector, the huge amount of money gained from the sky-high oil price, which gives us consumers extra expenses (petrol for our cars and heating of our homes), has led to more business on existing fields and opening of new fields. The market for drilling rigs is hot and Maersk Contractors has already signed up for the five units that will be delivered in the coming years.
  The same goes for Maersk Supply Service’s series of new anchor handlers, which will be delivered from Norwegian Aker Group as from the middle of June. The first goes to a Brazilian job – an area where Maersk Supply Service has been working since the early 1980s along with Brazilian and Norwegian ships. The next goes to the British sector and negotiations are ongoing for the next in the series of ten ships.
  Furthermore, the high oil price, which might get even higher (up to USD 200 per barrel has been mentioned), will generate even more business and it might move exploration to the arctic areas, where exploration and drilling is much more expensive than in the ‘easy’ areas in West Africa, where the water is deep, but the sea is mostly calm.

For the third time within the Offshore theme we take a look at the rebuilding of the former train ferry Karl Carstens. It is now at the final stage of becoming a floating production unit in the Mexican Gulf. This USD 150 million project would never have seen daylight if the price of oil had not gone up, neither would the Norwegian Subsea 7’s signing of a third contract for another USD 180 million pipe layer from a Dutch shipyard.

So, the high oil price means a lot of money and a high level of activity in most maritime sectors. Irrespective of how the oil price affects your shipping activities, we wish you all a nice summer – on duty or off duty.

Bent Mikkelsen. Editor, Denmark.

Latest update 29-06-2008

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