Marine Log - December 2008 - (Page 31) JACQUES DE CHATEAUVIEUX CEO , BOURBON BOURBON HAS BEEN ADDING NEWBUILDINGS TO ITS FLEET AT THE impressive rate of one every 12 days.“This is the challenge we knew we were going to have to face,” says Jacques de Chateau- vieux, the CEO of the Paris-based offshore service vessel operator. Bourbon has a massive EURO 1.7 billion newbuild program has transformed Bourbon from a conglomerate that included interests in groceries to a highly focused marine transportation services company, with Offshore and Bulk Divisions. As of early this year, Bourbon had 230 vessels in operation, including 49 deepwater supply vessels, 21 more traditional shelf vessels, 144 crewboats, 11 IMR vessels, and five salvage tugs. It is adding another 188 vessels under its ambitious Horizon 2012. Bourbon got building early and often, securing designs from the U.S.A.’s Guido Perla & Associates, Inc., and Norway’s Ulstein Group. The X-factor, however, was mariners. Bourbon will need to add 5,000 mariners by 2012. “We got organized knowing that we were going to have to secure people from three main reservoirs. One is from the industry. While they might be experienced offshore people, we have to make them understand and behave and work according to our standards for safety. “The second reservoir,” says de Chateauvieux, “is people coming from other marine related activities, such as the fishing and merchant marine sectors. In this case, they are already mariners, but we have to train them for the offshore to match Bourbon’s standards and requirements. “The third reservoir is from academies worldwide. We offer an internship with Bourbon. Students can accumulate their at sea work. This is combined with the work we do with those schools. It’s a good way to secure young cadets and officers,” adds de Chateauvieux. “In addition,” he adds, ”because we have series built vessels—we can use simulators to train people on anchor handling- Coast Guard for safety violations. The second scenario involves large construction vessels that come to install on work on offshore facilities. Again, that work is perfectly legal, but we think there are cases where they carry the material that they are going to install from U.S. ports to the project and that is illegal. ML: What exactly will the new Jones Act Compliance Manager Joe Kavanaugh be doing “in the field”? KW: Joe will put his experience as an investigator to work, developing sources who can help track foreign vessels in the Gulf and determine if they are violating the law. ML: What is Kavanaugh’s background? KW: He spent many years with the Coast Guard, primarily in investigations and vessel operations, before moving on to the old Customs agency as an agent. With the formation of DHS he moved to the new Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. In the meantime, he spent quite a bit of time running vessels for Customs operations. ML: Has the Jones Act been effective and enforced over your tenure as OMSA President? KW: Four years ago, we started our initiative to raise awareness of the law with the agencies, with Congress and, ultimately with the customers who hire these foreign boats. If you look back at that time, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the Coast Guard had just been folded into DHS. They had a new set of priorities and, in a lot of cases, an entirely new group of people doing the work. At the same time we saw a tremendous ramp-up in offshore activity, which attracted a lot of foreign boats. ML: Is this position going to work directly with the Coast Guard and Customs, DHS? KW: Yes. We will build on what are already very good relationships with the field units. We hope that this will be a very productive government/industry partnership. www.marinelog.com DECEMBER 2008 MARINE LOG 31 http://www.marinelog.com
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