Crowley took delivery of Sunshine State, a 331,000-barrel, double-hull oil and chemical tanker, from General Dynamics NASSCO in San Diego, Calif. yesterday for American Petroleum Tankers LLC.

The Sunshine State is the first vessel Crowley has taken delivery of since the company was contracted by APT to handle the shipyard construction management and the overall vessel management, crewing and operation of the company’s growing fleet. The Sunshine State measures 600 feet by 106 feet by 39 feet and has the capacity to carry 331,000 barrels of product. It has a single screw, slow speed diesel plant propulsion system with speeds of 15 knots.

APT’s fleet includes the Golden State, which was delivered in January 2009 and is on long-term charter to BP, and the Pelican State, which was delivered in June and is on long-term charter to Marathon. The Sunshine State is going to be chartered to Chevron U.S.A. Inc. The vessel will be delivered to Chevron U.S.A. Inc. in Pascagoula, Miss.

Two other sister vessels, the Empire State and the Evergreen State, which will both be charted to the Military Sealift Command, are scheduled to be delivered to Crowley in 2010.

“We are pleased to be able to provide our technical vessel construction expertise to the new-build process for the Sunshine State and look forward to offering the same attention to detail as NASSCO builds the Empire State and the Evergreen State,” said Todd Busch, senior vice president and general manager of Crowley’s technical services group. “Crowley will manage the operational side of the business for APT, including the vessel management and crewing, with the same high commitment to detail and safety as we provide to Crowley’s own fleet of petroleum vessels.”

More on this can be found on the Crowley website, HERE.

This weeks interesting ship was recently christened in the first part of January 2009.  The ship, named the Golden State, was built by General Dynamics NASSCO, a wholly-owned subsidiary of General Dynamics, and was delivered to U.S. Shipping Partners LP.  The Golden State is the lead ship of a new line of product tankers, disignated the PC-1 class.  Construction began in August of 2007 and was completed six months ahead of schedule and under budget, making it a excellent first-of-class ship spearheading the Product Carrier program at NASSCO.  It is the first of 9 product tankers to be delivered to U.S. Shipping Partners LP.

At a length of 600 feet, the Golden State has a cargo capacity of approximately 331,000 barrels and will be used to carry petroleum and chemical products between U.S. ports. The ship is named in honor of the State of California, where General Dynamics NASSCO is located. [Continue Reading →]

Did you know that Exxon Valdez’s Captain, Joesph Hazelwood, never had his masters’ license revoked and it remains valid to this date?

To put the recent conviction of Cosco Busan’s pilot John Cota in perspective, here are ten of the world’s largest oil spills in which the pilot was not convicted of federal charges.

Amoco Cadiz The Amoco Cadiz encountered stormy weather and ran aground off the coast of Brittany, France on March 16, 1978. Its entire cargo of 68.7 million gallons of oil spilled into the sea, polluting about 200 miles of Brittany’s coastline.

Arabian Gulf Spills Beginning in late January of the 1991 Gulf War, the Iraqi Army destroyed tankers, oil terminals, and oil wells in Kuwait, causing the release of about 900,000,000 barrels of oil. This was the largest oil spill in history.

Argo Merchant On December 15, 1976, the Argo Merchant ran aground on Fishing Rip (Nantucket Shoals), 29 nautical miles southeast of Nantucket Island, Massachusetts in high winds and ten foot seas. Six days later, the vessel broke apart and spilled its entire cargo of 7.7 million gallons of No. 6 fuel oil.

Barge Bouchard 155 On August 10, 1993, three ships collided in Tampa Bay, Florida: the barge Bouchard 155, the freighter Balsa 37, and the barge Ocean 255. The Bouchard 155 spilled an estimated 336,000 gallons of No. 6 fuel oil into Tampa Bay.

Barge Cibro Savannah On March 6, 1990, the Cibro Savannah exploded and caught fire while departing the pier at the Citgo facility in Linden, New Jersey. About 127,000 gallons of oil remained unaccounted for after the incident. No one knows how much oil burned and how much spilled into the environment.

Burmah Agate On November 1, 1979, the Burmah Agate collided with the freighter Mimosa southeast of Galveston Entrance in the Gulf of Mexico. The collision caused an explosion and a fire on the Burmah Agate that burned until January 8, 1980. An estimated 2.6 million gallons of oil were released into the environment, and another 7.8 million gallons were consumed by the fire.

Exxon Valdez On March 24, 1989, the Exxon Valdez ran aground on Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound, Alaska. The tanker was traveling outside the normal shipping lanes in an attempt to avoid ice. It spilled 10.8 million gallons of oil (out of a total cargo of 53 million gallons) into the marine environment, and impacted more than 1,100 miles of non-continuous Alaskan coastline. State and Federal agencies continue to monitor the effects of this spill, which was the largest oil spill in U.S. history.

Ixtoc I The 2-mile-deep exploratory well, Ixtoc I, blew out on June 3, 1979 in the Bay of Campeche off Ciudad del Carmen, Mexico. By the time the well was brought under control in March, 1980, an estimated 140 million gallons of oil had spilled into the bay. The Ixtoc I spill is currently #2 on the all-time list of largest oil spills of all time.

Jupiter On September 16, 1990, the tank vessel Jupiter was offloading gasoline at a refinery on the Saginaw River near Bay City, Michigan, when a fire started on board and the vessel exploded.

Megaborg The Megaborg released 5.1 million gallons of oil as the result of a lightering accident and subsequent fire. The incident occurred 60 nautical miles south-southeast of Galveston, Texas on June 8, 1990.

What happens when you let a comedian and elementary students paint a ship? No, the answer isn’t the Norwiegan Gem, it’s the Dream Tanker. Pink Tentacle tells us;

The Dream Tanker, one of the largest liquified natural gas (LNG) tankers in the world, now travels in style. Comedian-turned-painter Jimmy Onishi and 40 elementary school students have designed monster-sized psychedelic murals for the ship’s spherical tanks. The total area covered by the murals is large enough to cover 100 buses. The 120,000-ton Dream Tanker, owned by an affiliate of Osaka Gas, measures 289.5 meters (950 feet) long and 49 meters (160 feet) wide. With 4 independent spherical tanks measuring 43 meters (140 feet) in diameter, the tanker can hold up to 67,000 tons of LNG. Osaka Gas decided to decorate the tanker with graphics in celebration of the company’s 100th anniversary. The company asked Kansai-area elementary school students to draw pictures, which Jimmy Onishi then incorporated into his giant images of a fish, crab, shrimp and turtle. Sumitomo 3M Ltd. then used computers to process the images and printed them onto a special adhesive film, which was attached to the tanks. Read More…

Photos from her commissioning in 2006 can be found HERE.

University of Michigan researchers are investigating a radical new design for cargo ships that would eliminate ballast tanks, the water-filled compartments that enable non-native creatures to sneak into the Great Lakes from overseas.

PhysOrg.com is reporting that an alternative to current and proposed tank cleaning methods.

Here’s an excerpt:

“In some ways, it’s more like a submarine than a surface ship,” Parsons said. “We’re opening part of the hull to the sea, creating a very slow flow through the trunks from bow to stern.

“You’re continuously sweeping water through the ship and out,” he said. “So you’re always filled with local sea water, not hauling water from one part of the world to the other.”

The U-M ballast-free ship concept was conceived in 2001 and patented in 2004. It is intended for new-vessel construction only.

The full PhysOrg.com post is here.

(Ed. note: My guess is that this system could be used for cooling as well. A special thanks to BitterEnd reader Cherei in San Antonio for point me to this post.)

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This post was written by Richard Rodriguez, Rescue Tug Captain, and US Coast Guard approved instructor for License Training. You can read more of his articles at the BitterEnd of the net.

Head over to IMC Broker’s blog to find a really good guide to tanker sizes. From Handy to ULCC this guide has pictures, descriptions and dead weight tonnages to help you visualize the different sizes. An example:

Capesize: Refers to a rather ill-defined standard which have the common characteristic of being incapable of using the Panama or Suez canals, not necessarily because of their tonnage, but because of their size. These ships serve deepwater terminals handling raw materials, such as iron ore and coal. As a result, “Capesize” vessels transit via Cape Horn (South America) or the Cape of Good Hope (South Africa).

LINK : IMC’s Tanker Sizes Guide

If your not a professional mariner you might also want to take a look at their Shipboard Chain of Command Guide.

This video show the 1975 construction of the tanker M/V Batillus in St. Nazaire, France. she has since been scrapped.

MAREX brings us Choke Points effecting the world’s oil supply.

They write:

In 2007, total world oil production amounted to approximately 85 million barrels per day (bbl/d), and around one-half, or over 43 million bbl/d of oil was moved by tankers on fixed maritime routes. The international energy market is dependent upon reliable transport. The blockage of a chokepoint, even temporarily, can lead to substantial increases in total energy costs. In addition, chokepoints leave oil tankers vulnerable to theft from pirates, terrorist attacks, and political unrest in the form of wars or hostilities and shipping accidents which can lead to disastrous oil spills.

In case that’s not enough to sustain high oil prices Fred Fry points us to this ABC nightline story on the world mariner shortage, a problem we at gCaptain can testify as real and already creating problems. They write:

The Warsash Maritime Academy trains 200 pilots and skippers a year to man an ever-expanding global fleet of super tankers.

They’ll take the helm of some of the 6,000 new oil tankers and container ships will hit the water in the next five years. Why so many? Because of our continued reliance on oil, China’s manufacturing boom and because, well, no one has come up with a better idea.

“It takes a long, long time to train somebody to be in charge of it,” said Sadler. Shipping is booming, ships are getting bigger and harder to handle, and there aren’t enough men and women to take charge of the ships.

“There is now a gap in qualified personnel,” Sadler said.

Continue Reading…

Both these articles lead to one question: Could a ship with crew lacking experience shut down a harbor, or worse a choke point?

Video look at some of the jobs on bard Oil Tankers

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Video of the Hebei Spirit Oil Spill In South Korea.

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