TOWLINES
Royal Boskalis Westminster NV has announced that its associated company Smit Lamnalco has been awarded a 10 year contract, with additional options for extensions, by Esso Highland (a subsidiary of ExxonMobil) to provide terminal services at the Papua New Guinea liquefied natural gas (PNG LNG) export terminal near Port Moresby. Valued at $120m (Boskalis share $60m, services will commence mid-2014. Smit Lamnalco will provide towage and marine support services for LNG vessels at the terminal and will invest in four new 65 tonne bollard pull tugs. With the development of numerous large scale commodity export facilities also taking place in Australasia, Smit Lamnalco intends to further expand its global offering of terminal services.
International maritime service provider KOTUG has been awarded a six year towage concession to provide services for Germany’s new deep sea Jade Weser Port – Container Terminal Wilhelmshaven (CTW). The terminal will be commissioned in September 2012 and will be Germany’s first deepsea container terminal with a water depth of 18m. With its short navigable channel of only 23 nautical miles it can handle fully loaded container ships up to 430m length, 58 m wide and drafts of 16.5m, at any time independent of the tide. During the European tendering process for towage services at the terminal; KOTUG convinced the owners of the CTW of their capabilities and experience as a professional tugboat company, with dedicated crews and powerful, manoeuvrable ‘Rotor Tugs’. The company was also pleased to comply with its client’s request to offer their competitive towage services to Wilhelmshaven, inline with existing clients in Rotterdam, Hamburg and Bremerhaven.
On 9 July the high performance Rescue tug El Mous’if left Falmouth bound for its homeport in Algeria. El Mous’if , bearing the pennant number 702, is the second of three identical vessel to be ordered from the by STX OSV Braatvaag in Norway. The 86m vessels were based on the Rolls-Royce UT515 design and have a bollard pull of 200 tonnes and a maximum speed of 20 knots. The tugs are being operated by the Algerian Navy and under special contractual arrangements intensive trials and training have been conducted under the auspices of British Navy Flag Officer Sea Training in the Clyde and on the south coast of England. A third vessel is due to be delivered in September.
Svitzer has sold the ASD tug Flying Spindrift to FFS-A/S of Farsund in Norway. The 30m vessel was built in 1986 by Richard Dunston at Hessle and was the only tug with an azimuthing propulsion system to be constructed for the Clyde Shipping Company prior to the subsequent takeovers. Flying Spindrift is powered by two Ruston 6RKCM diesels of 3,188bhp (total), giving it a bollard pull of 40 tonnes. The tug has been renamed FFS Atlas and joins two other former British tugs the Voith tractor FFS Achilles (ex; Svitzer Stephanie and FFS Khan (ex; Alfred Lamey/Coburg). The sale was made via the services of broker Michael Vincent.
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