NAUTILUS P01 OCTOBER 2010.qxd - Nautilus International

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06 | telegraph | nautilusint.org | October 2010 OFFSHORE NEWS shortreports RECOVERY FORECAST: there are good grounds for ‘cautious optimism’ about the offshore supply vessel market, according to a new report from Germany’s DVB Bank. Demand for vessels has risen as a result of renewed investment in exploration, it says, although the recovery could be undermined by the huge amounts of new tonnage on order. The study suggests that the Deepwater Horizon disaster will generate strong demand for newer and high-spec ships — especially with age limits being introduced in a number of OSV tenders. TECHNIP CONSULT: members serving with Technip Offshore (UK) are set to be balloted on the possibility of industrial action following the rejection of a two-year pay offer that would give 1.5% in the first year and RPI plus 1.5% in the second year. Senior national secretary Paul Keenan commented: ‘Our only option is to consult members on whether they wish to be balloted for industrial action, but it is incumbent on all members to participate, as only a high turn-out will demonstrate their willingness to fight for a further improvement.’ MAERSK IMPROVES: members serving with Maersk Offshore Guernsey are being consulted on a ‘final’ improved offer tabled by management last month. The package includes a 3.5% pay increase and improved pension contributions. It is also linked to proposals for aligning service periods with Danish officers, with changes to over-tour duty bonuses and training day arrangements. Nautilus has urged members to ‘seriously consider acceptance’ and results of the consultation are due in mid-October. MIGRATION ALARM: offshore operators have warned the UK government that its cap on migration of skilled staff from outside the European Union is causing delays to key projects in the sector. Oil & Gas UK has warned ministers not to make the controls permanent, arguing that employment in the offshore sector is highly globalised and restrictions on the use of skilled foreign staff could have a damaging effect on the North Sea. GULF STALEMATE: Nautilus was set last month to accept a 2% pay offer for members employed by Gulf Offshore Guernsey. The offer had been rejected by members, but industrial officer Steve Doran said the numbers taking part in the consultation were insufficient to justify a ballot for industrial action being organised, and the Union could not risk the offer being withdrawn by the company. SUBSEA UPGRADE: Nautilus is consulting members employed by Subsea 7 after securing an improved pay and conditions offer last month. The Union has urged all members to participate in the consultations on the offer of a one-year 2.5% increase, effective from 1 July. CMA CALL: Nautilus met CMA Ships UK management last month in a final attempt to press the company not to go ahead with a proposed pay freeze for members on the Geo Prospector and Fugro vessels. MPs urged not to ban drilling ‘No case’ for deepwater moratorium, operators argue PUK offshore operators have urged politicians not to give in to calls for a ban on deepwater drilling. They told a House of Commons inquiry into the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico that there was ‘no case’ for a moratorium on new deepwater projects. Malcolm Webb, chief executive of Oil & Gas UK, said the UK regulations were robust enough to support the move to deepwater operations. ‘Just because an event happened in another part of the world, it doesn’t mean to say a regime such as ours should stop doing what we’re doing in what I believe is an entirely safe and proper way,’ he told the MPs. BP chief executive Tony Hayward told the hearing that his company would make sure that the lessons of the Deepwater Horizon are applied to the North Sea. Questioned on warning notices issued to BP installations in the North Sea last year, he said there was ‘no evidence of a systematic safety problem’ affecting the company. A report on the Gulf of Mexico disaster published by BP last month showed that no single factor was to blame, and that a sequence of failures involving a number of different parties led to the explosion and fire which killed 11 people and caused widespread pollution. Key problems included the AA big rise in deaths and major injuries in the UK offshore oil and gas industry over the last year has provoked a warning from Britain’s safety watchdog. The Health & Safety Executive, which released its latest annual statistics on the industry last month, is also concerned about the increased incidence of unplanned hydrocarbon releases. The safety body’s annual report revealed that 50 major injuries were reported in 2009/10 — 20 more than in 2008/09 and higher than the average of 42 over the previous five years. That pushed up the combined fatal and major injury rate by almost double — to 192 per 100,000 workers, compared with 106 in 2008/09 and 156 in 2007/08. Pictured right is the new Aemergency response and rescue (ERRV) vessel Grampian Calgary, arriving in Aberdeen to be christened last month. The NSS IMT948-design vessel is managed by the Craig Group’s North Star Shipping division and is going straight into service with Talisman Energy, providing crucial emergency response and rescue services to the failure of cement and shoe track barriers that allowed hydrocarbons to flow up the production casing through the bottom of the well. The report’s 25 recommendations include strengthening assurance on blow-out preventers, well control, pressure-testing for well integrity, emergency systems, cement testing, rig audit and verification, and personnel competence. Trisha O’Reilly, Oil & Gas UK’s communications director, said the report would form an important part of the comprehensive review of industry practices and procedures in the UK. ‘The UK’s Safety Case regime A marked rise was also recorded in the combined number of major and significant hydrocarbon releases — regarded as potential precursors to a major incident — with a provisional total of 85. That compares with 61 in 2008/09 — the lowest since HSE began regulating the industry. The good news was a significant reduction in the minor over-three-day injury rate and a fall in the number of dangerous occurrences reported. Steve Walker, head of HSE’s offshore division, commented: ‘Although the overall numbers of injury and dangerous occurrences are comparatively low, considering a workforce of almost 27,000 and the numbers of rigs and the continuous operations undertaken, this does not excuse the fact that the fatal and major injury rate has almost doubled. Piper B, Satire, Tartan and Claymore installations on a five-year charter. Grampian Calgary is one of the last vessels in a £130m Craig Group investment programme, launched in 2005, which aims to create the most modern wholly-owned British fleet operating in the UKCS, with a total of 32 vessels by the end of the year. Four further newbuilds have been ordered for 2011. obliges the industry to examine its existing arrangements in light of incidents around the world and put into action any consequent improvements that can be made,’ she said. ‘We firmly believe that the UK industry operates under a robust, fit-for-purpose regulatory regime with almost 7,000 wells having been safely drilled over the last 20 years.’ But Tzeporah Berman, head of Greenpeace International’s energy campaign, commented: ‘BP’s self penned review is a sorry attempt to spread the blame for the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster, but still reveals a devastating litany of human error, incompetence and technical failure.’ ‘Up your game’, HSE warns New North Star ERRV goes into action after Aberdeen naming The Stena Forth was one of two drilling ships targeted in protests over deepwater drilling last month Picture: Will Rose/Greenpeace Drillships target of protests A Stena Drilling has been at the centre of protests by the environment group Greenpeace, who are demonstrating against moves to begin deepwater drilling in the Atlantic Frontier. The UK-flagged drilling ship Stena Carron was boarded by activists off Shetland last month who tried to prevent the vessel sailing to a site in the Lagavulin oil field to drill an exploratory well in 500m of water. The protest was timed to coincide with a meeting of ministers from countries bordering the North Sea to discuss a German proposal for a moratorium on new deepwater oil drilling. The UK government sent two ministers to the meeting to block the proposal. The Stena Carron protest followed an earlier action by Greenpeace, in which four protestors occupied the Stena Don rig off Greenland, preventing it drilling for two days. Greenpeace said the protests were staged to try to prevent ‘a new oil rush’ in environmentally sensitive regions. Victor Rask, one of the activists who boarded the Stena Carron, explained: ‘David Cameron said his government would be the greenest ever, but he won’t even support a plan to protect our seas from a BP-style disaster. Instead of drilling for the last drops in fragile environments like this, oil companies should be developing the clean energy technologies we need to fight climate change and reduce our dependence on oil. We need a global ban on deep water drilling, and longer term we need a permanent shift away from fossil fuels towards clean energy solutions.’ ‘This year’s overall health and safety picture is simply not good enough. The industry has shown it can do better and it must do in future.’ Mr Walker said the industry ‘must up its game’ and address the root causes of the increase in hydrocarbon releases, and he threatened that the HSE would take a tough line on companies that put workers at risk. Although beyond its regulatory control, HSE also pointed attention to the 17 fatalities that occurred during transport operations that support the sector. Two crew and 14 offshore workers died on a helicopter flight returning from the Miller platform to Aberdeen on 1 April 2009, and one worker was killed in a lifting related incident on a diving support vessel when in transit.
Master is fined for drinking on duty The master of an oil tanker has Abeen fined £1,600 after being caught over the alcohol limit while in charge of his ship in the Solent. A police breath test found Captain Rajesh Kumah Singh to be twice the limit after his vessel, the 48,983dwt Nord Fast, arrived at Fawley last month. Magistrates heard the alarm had been raised by a pilot who was concerned about the state of the master as the Singapore-flagged vessel was proceeding into Fawley oil refinery jetty. Capt Singh failed a test onboard the vessel and was taken to a police station for further tests, before being charged with failure to provide a specimen of breath. Lyndhurst magistrates heard that the master had admitted drinking ‘one or two’ glasses of whisky after settling a row between crew members after the ship had docked. Capt Singh pleaded guilty to one offence of failing to supply a specimen after having been arrested on suspicion of being over the prescribed limit. He was fined £1,600 and ordered to pay £85 costs and a £15 victim support charge. Magistrates told him that the case was ‘a very serious matter which was aggravated by your position of authority and your responsibility for the vessel and crew, her size and the amount of fuel cargo that she was carrying’. Keith Tatman, head of navigation safety at the Maritime & Coastguard Agency, commented: ‘The master has responsibility at all times for the safety of his ship, her crew and any other users of the sea with which his vessel may interact. To put any of them at risk due to the use of alcohol, at any time but particularly when within a very busy commercial and leisure harbour falls well below the standards expected of a master mariner.’ Murwab becomes biggest LNG visitor at Milford Haven A new milestone has been Fpassed at Milford Haven, where the Q-Flex vessel Murwab is pictured right becoming the largest LNG carrier to dock at Dragon LNG’s Waterston terminal. The Murwab is the first Q-Flex vessel to offload at Dragon LNG and sailed from Ras Laffan, Qatar, with over 150,000 cu m of liquefied gas onboard. Discharge to the onshore PA Filipino crew member from the Queen Mary 2 was jailed in Canada for 120 days last month after being found in possession of child pornography while his ship was docked in the port of Halifax. Edward Mangubat was arrested by Canada Border Services Agency officers after they searched his laptop computer and found sexually explicit movies featuring children. He pleaded guilty last month to a Customs Act charge of possessing illegally imported goods and was sentenced to 120 days in jail. He will be deported as soon as the prison term is completed. Crown attorney Mark Donohue told the terminal took about 24 hours. Alec Don, chief executive of the Milford Haven Port Authority, said the visit demonstrated ‘the new energy era’ for the UK. ‘We already handle 25% of the UK’s petrol and diesel requirements and now our new LNG facilities give us the potential to process 30% of the UK’s gas needs.’ Picture: Ian Richards/ Pembrokeshire Photography Prison for porn Queen Mary 2 crewman jailed in Canada for having ‘repulsive material’ A Dutch fishing vessel skipper has been fined A£3,500 and ordered to pay more than £3,750 costs after being found guilty of sailing the wrong way through a traffic separation scheme. Folkestone magistrates heard that the UKregistered trawler Wilhelmina had been spotted by the Dutch coastguard proceeding the wrong way down the northbound lane of the Off Texel TSS last January. About 40 minutes later the trawler was observed passing within one cable of a northbound special disc unts “on airfares for marine personnel” vessel. The Wilhelmina — which was fishing at the time of the incident — was then identified by a Netherlands Coastguard aircraft. Passing sentence, magistrates told owner/skipper Rense Johannes de Boer, of Urk in the Netherlands, that he had changed direction in a designated shipping lane for 4.5 miles in direct contravention of the collision prevention regulations. The incident was initially investigated by the North Sea Unit of the Netherlands Water Police, but Gas conversion F Pictured left is the 25,000dwt product tanker Bit Viking, which will soon be converted to run on liquid natural gas (LNG). The Swedish-flagged vessel is to be retro-fitted with a duel fuel Wärtsilä engine, making it the first ship classified with Germanischer Lloyd to use gas as fuel. Owned by Tarbit Shipping and operated by Statoil along the coastline of Norway, the Bit Viking will qualify for lower Norwegian NOx emission taxes after the conversion. Sea trials with the new engine are planned for May 2011. We are able to offer discounted air travel for all staff employed in the marine industry from crew, shorebased staff to spouse’s travelling to and from vessels. October 2010 | nautilusint.org | telegraph | 07 court that another crew member had unwittingly downloaded child pornography from a USB drive he had borrowed from Mangubat. Border agency officers went to Mangubat’s cabin and discovered that his laptop contained several videos showing ‘what can only be described as sexual assault of children,’ Mr Donohue said. ‘Several of the videos appeared to be of children under 12.’ Mangubat — who is married and has three children and has served at sea for seven years — told the court:’I work hard and I serve in my country with my church. Forgive me. I am sorry.’ Blair MacDonald, an investigator with the border agency, said Mangubat is the third person to be prosecuted this year for bringing child pornography into Canada through the Port of Halifax. Nine people were charged in 2009 and three people in 2008. Canada’s public safety minister Vic Toews commented after the case: ‘Our government is committed to keeping this repulsive material out of our country, and preventing the exploitation of children in Canada and around the world.’ In an unrelated case, Nyoman Putra — an Indonesian crew member onboard the cruiseship Carnival Glory — was jailed for 30 days by the court in Halifax after admitting smuggling child pornography into the country last month. Skipper went 4.5 miles wrong way down TSS after it was determined that the incident occurred in international waters it was reported to the Maritime & Coastguard Agency for further investigation. Following the hearing last month, David Fenner, the MCA’s principal eastern region fishing vessel surveyor, commented: ‘Mr de Boer could have fished quite legally within the lane had he proceeded in the general direction of traffic flow for that lane. ‘By failing to do so he placed himself, his vessel and crew and other users of the TSS at risk.’ Using our extensive marine fare programme we are able to provide changeable and refundable tickets. We are totally dedicated to providing an efficient and personal service. Contact us today for a quote www.vikingrecruitment.com +44 (0) 1304 240 881 travel@vikingrecruitment.com we place people first... NEWS Go-ahead for GCNS merger Glasgow College of Nautical FStudies merged last month with Glasgow’s Central and Metropolitan colleges after receiving the go-ahead from the Scottish Government in August. The new institution will be officially launched as City of Glasgow College in early 2011. The outgoing GCNS board welcomed the move, saying that it would be in the best long-term interests of students and staff. They added: ‘We share the sadness that many of you will feel at the loss of the GCNS name — a name that has a national and international reputation for excellence. However, we are equally confident that this reputation will go forward into the new City of Glasgow College.’ The hope is that combining the three colleges — to create Scotland’s largest further education college — will improve the range of courses on offer and safeguard the future of the more specialised courses. There are also plans for muchneeded new buildings and facilities. The Marine Skills Centre has already been completed, but the incoming City of Glasgow College board admitted in a statement last month that work is still needed to secure funding for the rest of the project. Go for LNG, says GL The shipping industry is in Fdanger of not being able to meet international and regional targets to cut its greenhouse gas emissions, a major classification society warned last month. Speaking at the SMM exhibition in Hamburg, Germanischer Lloyd executive board member Dr Hermann Klein warned that growth in the world merchant fleet means the industry will probably have to double its efforts to cut CO 2 output by 20% from 2005 levels over the next decade, as required by the European Union. And even if more ‘zero-emission’ ships come into service over the next 25 years, Dr Klein said the industry would face problems in meeting tougher international targets for cutting greenhouse gases and it was time for radical thought on such issues as ship size, speed, operation and power generation. GL senior vice-president Dr Pierre Sames said the industry should invest in LNG as an alternative fuel source that could cut carbon emissions by 23%, with even bigger reductions of 80% in NOx and 92% in SOx.
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NAUTILUS P01 OCTOBER 2010.qxd - Nautilus International

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