Bourbon needs thousand of seafarers

Despite the economy, Bourbon Offshore is growing rapidly and is determined to keep on growing. The company has a EUR 1.7 billion newbuilding program comprising of 150 vessels and boats. Read more…

About six months ago, I went through the websites of most of the big offshore service companies and counted all of the vessels that were contracted to be built which included pipelaying, heavylift, sat dive, imr, accomodation, seismic, anchorhandling, etc… I ended up with a total of 262 vessels most being built in Norway but many in South Asia as well. I know with the credit crisis and low oil prices, many of those vessels won’t end up being built afterall but if you add all the drillships & MODU’s contracted to be built, I can easily see 10000 additional mariners needed around the world just to man all these ships.