Image: Teekay

Teekay Offshore Partners L.P. (NYSE:TOO) announced an agreement with Statoil to provide a floating storage and offtake (FSO) unit for the Gina Krog oil and gas field located in North Sea.

The contract will be serviced by a new FSO unit converted from the 1995-built shuttle tanker, Randgrid, which is currently 67 percent owned by Teekay Offshore. TOO will finance the $200 million conversion and acquire the remaining 33 percent ownership of the vessel in the process.

Upon delivery in Q1 2017, the newly converted FSO unit will commence operations under a 3-year firm period time-charter contract to Statoil, which includes 12 additional one-year extension options.

“This strategically important conversion project represents another milestone in Teekay Offshore’s expanding FSO franchise,” commented Ingvild Sæther, President, Teekay Shuttle and Offshore Services. “The Gina Krog FSO project highlights how Teekay Offshore can combine its growing offshore project development capability and financial resources to provide an FSO solution to Statoil while repurposing an existing shuttle tanker asset to generate distributable cash flow accretion.”

At the beginning of May, Teekay Offshore signed an agreement with Salamander Energy to convert one of their shuttle tankers, the Navion Clipper, to an FSO unit.  Once converted in 2H 2014, this vessel will operate offshore Thailand under a 10-year charter contract commencing in the third quarter of 2014.   According to TOO’s market filing this month, the capital cost of the Navion Clipper conversion is approximately $50 million with and estimated associated annual cash flow of approximately $6.5 million.

Image: Total, click for larger

Qatar Petroleum International (QPI) and Total announced a landmark partnership agreement with Total E&P Congo today representing QPI’s first international investment in an offshore oil and gas project.

The agreement involves a 15% share capital increase in Total E&P Congo by QPI however, the value of this investment was not disclosed.  In a statement on their website, Total notes that his investment will be directed toward the development of the Moho Nord project.

This investment reflects a strategic move toward expanding QPI’s international presence, particularly with regard to Africa according to a statement by QPI Chairman and Minister of Energy and Industry, Dr. Mohammed Bin Saleh Al Sada.

Although the Moho Nord field is primarily focused on oil production with an anticipated production rate of 140,000 boe/d by 2017, Qatar’s presence in the Congo could reflect a more strategic move with respect to Congo’s gas reserves.

According to the Oil & Gas Journal, Congo holds one-fifth of the proven gas reserves in sub-Saharan Africa.  A recent EIA report notes that 334 billion cubic feet (bcf) of gas were produced by the Congo in 2011, yet only 15 percent (51 Bcf) was marketed.  The majority of the natural gas, 68 percent (228 Bcf), was reinjected to boost oil production and the remaining 17 percent (55 Bcf) was flared or vented.

Image of the capsized Costa Concordia on 14 January 2012.

ROME, May 22 (Reuters) – The captain of the cruise ship Costa Concordia, which capsized off Italy’s west coast last year killing 32 people, will face trial for manslaughter as well as other charges, an Italian judge ruled on Wednesday.

The giant Costa Concordia flipped on its side outside the Tuscan port of Giglio in January last year after it struck rocks during a manoeuvre that brought it too close to the shore.

The accident triggered a chaotic night-time evacuation of more than 4,000 passengers and crew from the 290-metre-long ship (951-ft), which still rests on a rock shelf outside the port.

WATCH: Costa Concordia Shipwreck Like You’ve Never Seen Before

Captain Francesco Schettino left the ship before all the ship’s crew and passengers had been taken ashore.

A judge in the Tuscan city of Grosseto ordered Schettino to be tried for multiple manslaughter, abandoning ship and other charges, with the first hearing set for July 9, Schettino’s lawyer Francesco Pepe told Reuters.

If found guilty, Schettino could face up to 20 years in jail, according to Pepe.

Prosecutors rejected a plea bargain offer from Schettino last month but accepted those of five other officials, including four ship’s officers and the crisis coordinator of the vessel’s owners, Costa Cruises.

Costa Cruises, a unit of Carnival Corp , agreed to pay a 1-million-euro ($1.29 million) fine to settle potential criminal charges in April. That means that Schettino will be the only person tried for the maritime disaster.

“We expected from the beginning that he would be put on trial,” Schettino’s lawyer Pepe said. He argues that his client has been made a scapegoat for the accident.

The judge on Wednesday also rejected Schettino’s request to use new evidence in the case that Pepe said would “clarify” that there were other factors in the accident beyond the captain’s control.

A recording of a coastguard officer ordering Schettino to “get back aboard, damn it!” in a furious telephone call spawned a popular catchphrase that was printed on T-shirts in Italy.

(c) 2013 Thomson Reuters, Click For Restrictions

Maersk Line has just released this time-lapse video of the Maersk Triple-E as a sequel to their first video of the vessel of the under construction at DSME in Okpo, South.

So we don’t know exactly how many pictures this time-lapse to stitch together, but the first one was 50,000 so we’re keeping in the ballpark.

WATCH: Building the World’s Largest Ship, PART ONE

This second video focuses on the Triple-E’s float out, which took place February 23. As Maersk Line notes on the Triple-E’s website, worldslargestship.com, it took four hours to fill the drydock with water, rushing in at a rate of 2,500 cubic meters of water per minute.

The first Triple-E, named M/V Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller, is set for an on-time delivery June 28.

M/V Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller being towed into the Bay.

SEE ALSO: Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller Photo Tour

Fathom, the maritime eco-efficiency specialists, have just completed the gargantuan task of updating, re-writing and refreshing their flagship publication Ship Efficiency: The Guide. This substantial update, coming two years after it’s first publication, has revealed a significant change in the fuel and emissions savings technology market in shipping in the last two years.

First published in 2011, The Guide independently profiles and critically examines the entire  maritime fuel and emissions savings sphere and each technology provider offering clean technology solutions to the market.

The new edition of The Guide is almost double the lengrth of the previous.  Catherine McMillian, Editorial Director commented:

“Despite being immersed in the minutiae of shipping’s clean technology market on a day-to-day basis, the changes seem sometimes creeping. It is at moments like this however, when we hold the proof of the final version in our hands, that we are suddenly and starkly aware of the Guide’s growth in depth and volume; and thus just how much the industry has grown in the past two years since we wrote the first edition.”

“The maritime clean technology market has developed at such a formidable rate that we have had to go back to the drawing board for each technology sector and application and completely re-write every section! We have researched, investigated, interviewed, written, edited and re-written until our brains ached and our fingertips blistered (nearly!). ”

In order to make profits healthier, ship operators must work smarter, not necessarily harder- ‘efficiency’ technolgies are vital in supporting this. Operators need to cut costs just as much as regulators want emissions to be reduced.

The new Guide clearly shows an increase in technologies that have reached commercialisation and also a significant increase in trials of both new and existing technolgoies. However technologies, such as the Mewis Duct, that have seen a great change in upake in the last two years are still in a minority.

In many ways, the clean technology sector has never been so much in demand, or so drastically needed. However, it is also a sector without a global standard, a widely recognised ‘stamp of approval’ that owners and operators can rely on as proof of efficacy; this can be perceived by owners as offering a wide open door for larger-than-life promises and significant under-deliveries.

Suspicion can reign and uptake slowed as a result; a situation perhaps not helped a great deal by some of the technology companies themselves in earlier years.

The question for technical managers is how to sort the wheat from the chaff? How on earth can they find the time to research and assess all of the possible solutions that are mushrooming into existence in this booming industry?

“We know from the hundreds of hours that we put in to each edition of The Guide just how difficult this is.” says McMillan.

Clear and simple, yet highly detailed, the Guide is a fantastic roadmap to this complex market.

It is not just Fathom’s content however, The Guide is backed by contributions from BIMCO, Andreas Chrysostomou, and Howard Fireman of ABS, who share key insights and advisory information to and from across the industry.

Fathom describe its partners with the deepest respect and admiration for their work within this expanding sector.

“Our lead sponsor, ABS, walk as well as talk. Their support of the Guide celebrates the founding of a dedicated Operational and Environmental Performance (OEP) department to develop cost effective, fuel efficient measures for owners across the vessel lifecycle.”

Fathom’s Final Thoughts

So as the champagne flows in the office, Fathom are extremely proud to share with you a short sample from the newest Ship Efficiency: The Guide.

Cheers!

Click here to see an exclusive preview sample of our latest Guide.

The complete Ship Efficiency: The Guide, 2^ndEdition, is available now with a pre-order discount. See here for details.

Front Shanghai, Image (c) Frontline Tankers

(Bloomberg) — Oil-tanker owners will struggle to retain crews and maintain ships after losing the most money in four decades, according to the industry’s biggest trade group.

The problems won’t ease any time soon because some vessel rates may take as long as four years to rebound, said Katharina Stanzel, the managing director of the International Association of Independent Tanker Owners, or Intertanko. Its members operate more than half of the world’s tankers by capacity.

Owners lost about $27 billion since 2009 and rates for the largest vessels may only recover by 2017, according to Intertanko. Daily rates for the biggest carriers slid 68 percent over the past year because of a glut of capacity, figures from London-based Clarkson Plc, the largest shipbroker, show.

“The biggest risk I see is that we will have nobody left to actually make the deliveries,” Stanzel said by e-mail May 17. Industry conditions were “probably equally dramatic” when rates plunged in 1973-74, she said.

Earnings for very large crude carriers, each able to hold 2 million barrels of oil, retreated to $10,674 a day, according to Clarkson’s figures. That’s less than half of the $24,200 that Frontline Ltd., the tanker operator led by shipping billionaire John Fredriksen, said in February its VLCCs need to break even.

General Maritime Corp., the New York-based tanker operator, filed for bankruptcy protection in November 2011 and was followed a year later by Overseas Shipholding Group Inc., the biggest U.S. tanker owner. General Maritime emerged from bankruptcy protection in May 2012.

World Fleet

Intertanko members operate vessels with a combined capacity of about 283.5 million deadweight tons, according to the group. That equates to about 58 percent of the global fleet of tankers bigger than 10,000 tons.

Owners are contending with oil demand that will advance 0.9 percent this year, the least since 2011, according to the International Energy Agency, an adviser to 28 developed nations. The tanker fleet’s capacity will increase 7.8 percent in that period, Clarkson data show.

“What makes this situation particularly challenging is the outlook is so negative,” Malcolm Willingale, a project manager for Intertanko, said in an interview May 10. The surplus and slowing demand growth may hold rates down until 2017, he said.

Oil companies are shipping more cargoes on single-voyage charters, which earn less for tanker owners. The proportion of ships operating in the so-called spot market expanded to about 59 percent of total trade last year from 51 percent in 2010, according to Intertanko.

Ships on five-year charters are earning about $26,000 a day, while those in the spot market are getting about 60 percent less, according to Clarkson data.

Forward freight agreements, swaps used to bet on future shipping rates, anticipate VLCCs will earn $15,000 a day on average in 2015 for carrying Middle East oil to Asia, according to figures from Marex Spectron Group.

- Rob Sheridan, Copyright 2013 Bloomberg.

Nils S. Andersen, CEO A.P. Moeller-Maersk A/S

May 22 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. will overtake Asia as the biggest driver of global growth this year while Europe’s turmoil is hurting trade flows, said Nils Smedegaard Andersen, chief executive officer of A.P. Moeller-Maersk A/S.

The owner of the world’s biggest container line can tell from tracking demand for shipping transport that “the U.S. is starting to help pull some weight, things are moving in the right direction over there,” Andersen, whose Maersk Line unit controls about 15 percent of global seaborne capacity, said in an interview. “South America and Asia were the main centers for growth last year, whereas we see the U.S. playing a larger part this year,”

The International Monetary Fund estimates the global economy will expand 3.3 percent this year after growing 3.2 percent in 2012. China’s output will increase by 8 percent, compared with 1.9 percent growth in the U.S., the fund predicts. The 17-nation euro area will contract 0.3 percent, the IMF said April 16.

“Europe is dragging down the global economy,” Andersen said. “The reasons are well-known: debt, large public sectors and government hand-outs.”

After more than three years of debt turmoil and austerity policies that have exacerbated recessions across the region, Europe has become the world’s worst-performing economic region, according to the IMF. Meanwhile the U.S.’s willingness to embrace more extreme forms of monetary easing and less severe fiscal tightening is buoying a recovery in the world’s largest economy.

Ebbs, Flows

Next year, the IMF estimates the U.S. economy will expand 3 percent, compared with 1.1 percent growth in the euro area.

“It ebbs and flows between the regions,” Andersen said in the May 17 interview.

China’s manufacturing expanded at a weaker pace in April in a sign that the slowdown in the world’s second-largest economy is extending into the second quarter. The Purchasing Managers’ Index fell to 50.6 from 50.9 in March, the National Bureau of Statistics and China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing said May 1.

Maersk Line on May 17 cut a forecast for global container shipping demand growth to as low as 2 percent from as little as 4 percent previously. Trade volumes on Maersk Line’s most important route from Asia to Europe will grow at an even slower pace, the company said.

- Christian Wienberg, Copyright 2013 Bloomberg.

TAMPERE, Finland, May 22 (Reuters) – Finnish cargo handling equipment maker Cargotec’s marine unit will be ready to run independently by the end of the year and can list in Singapore any time after that, Cargotec’s new chief executive said.

Mika Vehvilainen said the exact timing of the IPO for the MacGregor unit, which makes hatch covers and cranes for ships and is the company’s most profitable business, depends on a recovery in market conditions.

“You need to carve out the business…. That will be done by the end of this year,” Vehvilainen told Reuters when asked of preparations for the listing, which the company has said would take place in the first half of 2014 at earliest.

“When the market conditions are more favourable we will do the listing.”

Vehvilainen, former CEO of airline Finnair, took over leadership of Cargotec in March. Investors are hoping he can replicate his turnaround of the airline at Cargotec, which has been hit by global economic uncertainty and a glut of vessels ordered before the financial crisis.

The planned spin-off and listing of the MacGregor unit in Singapore is aimed at boosting its profile to attract more clients in Asia and raising money for investments and acquisitions. It also hopes the move would allow the rest of the business to concentrate on equipment for ports and trucks.

Vehvilainen said the company needed better cost control, after analysts criticised it for missteps in pricing and spending. The company’s first-quarter operating profit fell to 15 million euros ($19 million) from 37.5 million.

However, he said he had no plans for major strategy changes, adding that many of the measures launched by his predecessor Mikael Makinen, such as moving production to Poland from Finland and Sweden, were the right ones.

“I don’t see large scale, big restructuring. We are mostly focused on the right issues,” he said. ($1 = 0.7769 euros) (Editing by Patrick Graham and Ritsuko Ando)

(c) 2013 Thomson Reuters, Click For Restrictions

(U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Bryan Blair/Released)

(May 21, 2013) – Combined Task Force 521 conducts convoy escort operations with a large natural gas tanker during International Mine Countermeasures Exercise 2013 (IMCMEX). IMCMEX 13 includes navies from more than 40 countries and will exercise a wide spectrum of defensive operations designed to protect international commerce and trade.

(May 19, 2013) – (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Bryan Blair/Released)

Lt. Bryan Wolfe, operations officer for CTF 521, speaks with the commanding officer of a large natural gas tanker, about plans for an upcoming mission during International Mine Countermeasures Exercise 2013 (IMCMEX 13).