Higher fuel costs buoy demand for ships: Seaspan

The practice of "slow steaming" - running ships at lower speeds to conserve pricey fuel - is increasing demand for container ships on global trade routes, Seaspan Corp. chief executive officer Gerry Wang said.

Because customers still want goods delivered on the same schedule, slow-steaming means more ships are required to deliver the same amount of goods - so a shipping line, through redeployment, might run nine ships on an Asia-Europe route that used to operate with eight, he said. Seaspan, which is incorporated in the Marshall Islands and has executive offices in Hong Kong and Vancouver, leases container ships to major shipping lines. Slow-steaming, along with increased Asia-Europe container traffic, is driving container ship demand and makes a potential glut of big new ships less likely, Mr. Wang said on a conference call. "I'm not 100-per-cent sure that even with all the big ships coming on in 2009 that there will be oversupply," he said. Shipping lines have in recent years ordered more than 100 post-Panamax (too big to fit through the Panama Canal) vessels, raising speculation of a glut of container ships. The company reported a first-quarter loss of $37.7-million (U.S.) or 65 cents a share on sales of $54.2-million for the three months ended March 31, compared with a profit of $14.7-million or 31 cents a share on sales of $41.2-million for the same period the previous year. Seaspan reported "normalized" earnings, which exclude non-cash losses from interest rate swap agreements, of 28 cents a share, a penny off an analysts' consensus estimate of 29 cents. The company said it is redeploying ships to Asia-Europe routes as that traffic picks up and Asia-North American shipments soften. Asia-Europe traffic is estimated to have grown by 17 per cent last year compared with 6.9-per-cent increase in Asia-North America cargo.

Read More

High-tech pirates are no romantic figures

A French yacht. A Japanese tanker. A Spanish fishing boat. After several years of decline, pirates are striking with increasing frequency on the high seas.

Attacks in the first three months of this year were up 20 percent compared with the same period in 2007, analysts say. Last year saw more pirate attacks than the year before. And although the motive is still money, today's pirates are a far cry from the eye-patched, peg-legged swashbucklers of Hollywood. "The only thing today's pirates have in common with the romantic vision people have of pirates is that they are ruthless criminals who exploit very vulnerable people at sea," said Pottengal Mukundan of the International Maritime Bureau, which monitors shipping crime. Today's maritime muggers don night-vision goggles, carry rocket launchers and navigate with global positioning devices. With the ransoms they collect, pirates can earn up to $40,000 a year, analysts say. That's a fortune for someone from an impoverished country. A spate of well-publicized attacks this month has cast the problem in sharp relief. On April 4, suspected Somali pirates seized a French luxury yacht and held its crew of 30 for a week. Then, in a scene straight out of a Hollywood movie, French troops chased the hijackers into the desert before the hijackers could make off with the reported $2 million in ransom. Last week, suspected pirates shot at a Japanese tanker in the waters off the Horn of Africa. Assailants have also attacked ships carrying food and relief supplies to war-torn regions.
Read More

Seacor continues to build monohulls

Despite the success of their catamaran crewboats, US-based Seacor Marine continues to build their conventional crewboats.

Hull 464, to be named ‘Alice G. McCall', is currently building at Gulf Craft in Louisiana, to be delivered in August of this year. Two more conventional vessels will follow the 57.9- by 10.4-metre boat in 2009 and 2010. Five 1,342kW Cummins KTA50-M2 main engines for a total of 6,711kW will power the DP2-classed ‘Alice G. McCall'. Gears will be Twin Disc MG-6848 with 2.93:1 reduction turning four-blade Nibral propellers on five-inch shafts. The boat will have three independent rudders. A Cummins QSM11 engine will power the boat's Thrustmaster azimuthing bow thruster. An additional Cummins QSM11 will drive the two tunnel bow thrusters. The vessel's two 135kW gensets will each be powered by Cummins 6 CTA engines, as will the bulk compressor drive. Maximum speed will be 26 knots at 1,900RPM with fuel consumption at 1,590 litres per hour. Cruising speed will be 23 knots at 1,800RPM and 1,173 litres per hour fuel consumption. At the economy speed of 20 knots and 1,600RPM fuel consumption drops to 984 litres per hour.

Read More