Marine Log - November 2008 - (Page 58)

TUGS&BARGES ICE CLASS TANKERS Kennedy, the chartering manager, were confident in our partnership with Crowley. We realized that if Crowley believed it could be done and was willing to go through the model testing phase and invest their resources to the project, then it would be a success. Crowley doesn’t gamble their resources cavalierly and they have a very good group of dedicated and knowledgeable operations and engineering people to prove it would work. We were also comforted by their willing- ness to work with the Shell refineries in Anacortes and elsewhere both before and after delivery to fine tune the vessels to meet Shell’s expectations,” Van Duzer said. With one customer onboard, securing others came more easily. As a matter of fact, each of the ATBs built to date, and those on the drawing board, are chartered on multi-year agreements prior to the first step of construction, which says a tremendous amount about the type of relationships Crowley has developed with its petroleum customers over the years. To provide additional expertise along the way and make sure that all bases were covered during the build process, Dave Roggenbeck, vice president of engineering, was on site throughout the construction of the 155,000-barrel, 550 series. To give the customers additional comfort, once the build process was complete, Roggenbeck headed to Long Beach to take over ATB operations during the first critical years of the new program. So with Shell taking the 550-1, contracting for the 550-2 became a priority. As the tanker market continued to tighten and the ‘double-hull’ standard loomed on the horizon, building a vessel in the U.S. at a reasonable price seemed less and less of a reality. Add to the mix the fact that with an ATB you can move the same amount of product at about half the cost of operating one of the mammoth tankers and you’ve got yourself a deal, or so said Tosco (Conoco) to the 550-2, BP to the 550-3 and Shell again to the 550-4. Though it wasn’t all smooth sailing, the ATBs were taking the market by storm and, at a size about half that of tankers, met the customer needs much better. The aging refineries on the West Coast were built closer to World War II than to modern day, and couldn’t handle the full tankers anyway, so why not give them what they needed? Crowley did – again and again. BUILDING ON SUCCESS Crowley, having acquired Marine Transport Lines in 2001 and integrated their personnel into the company’s ranks, saw new business opportunities for ATBs, including chemical transportation 58 MARINE LOG NOVEMBER 2008 www.marinelog.com http://www.bollfilterusa.com/ http://www.bollfilterusa.com/ http://www.marinelog.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Marine Log - November 2008

Marine Log - November 2008 Contents Editorial Second Thoughts Update Inside Washington Looking Back at 130 Years Generation NeXt What's Ahead? Media Kit 2009 Defying the Naysayers Rampant Piracy Takes Shipping Hostage The Last Chapter of the New Carissa International Workboat Show Preview Newsmakers Tech News Contracts Events Website Directory ML Buyer's Guide ML Marketplace Marine Salvage

Marine Log - November 2008

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