I employ the sharpest minds from the US Maritime Academies. There is no better place to operate a vessel than from the third floor. These are facts proven over and over again by repeating the same incidents. If you people can’t make good decisions and follow policy I will remove that responsibility from you. I have had my lawyers layout and word the SMS and Safe Ops manuals in such a way to create confusion. This way you have no choice but to call the office for important decisions. If you and your operations manager make a wrong decision I have plenty of latitude to fire both of you for cause. It is this crippling fear of losing your job that helps keep you people from ruining my reputation and losing me business opportunities.
As far as deferred maintenance goes we are in a bust cycle. This means I move the bean counters into position to save the goose that lays the golden eggs. There is no need to worry about poor maintenance when you employ the best mariners in the world. Proper preventive maintenance in good times means the equipment is in fantastic state when times are lean. There again having the best crews money can buy pays off in spades in these dark times. Perhaps Statoil should quit hiring the local idiots and hire highly trained and over qualified American engineers to maintain their broken down last gen equipment.