- It’s OSG, not OSC.
- It’s not a secret - the youngest ship in that fleet was built 11 years ago.
- I’ll give you a hint. You bolded the wrong thing.
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Oh horror!! Now corrected.
Soo!! That would be young in the JA fleet(??)
We are talking about ten MR tankers, are we not?
Please don’t keep me in suspense. Which two ships (hulls) are you takling about??
OSG built 12 Veteran Class tankers.
10 are owned by APSI or whatever their name is now.
The Overseas Chinook and the Overseas Cascade are owned by OSG.
Why didn’t you just say so when I asked:
Sorry, I did not associate Shuttle tankers with the Veteran class MR tankers.
When you eventually gave the names it was easy to verify that those two were originally built as Veteran class MR tankers at Philly, later converted to shuttle tankers in Poland:
https://www.tankeroperator.com/CategoriesWiseNewsDisplay.aspx?NewsId=5769&NewsCategoryType=CategoryWise&TypeID=24
I do stand corrected, though; there were also two Veteran class MR tankers built for Crowley:
Except they weren’t. Those conversions happened in South Carolina.
Overseas Tampa was converted in Poland.
I don’t know who you are or why you are logged in to bugge’s account, but he’ll be upset when he finds out that this statement has been posted in his name!
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Also, no.
They were converted immediately after delivery at Detyens in Charleston.
The Tampa was converted in 2015 at Rementowa in Gdańsk.
So much drama. Who will win the 2022 Golden Pedant Award for dedication to minutia?
It’s up in the air folks! The Vegas boys are betting on Ombugge, a seasoned fact policeman, while the London bookies say that new blood means new energy! All bets are final, no refunds!
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I have no problem admitting when I’m wrong.
You should try it some time.
Is that where we are now in this country? That the difference between South Carolina and Poland is pedant minutia?
I hope you navigate/do PMS with greater care of ‘pedant details’ than you’ve shown here.
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30 ships built in 16 years, with the last completion Mar 2019? And these are simple medium range tankers and small container ships. Definitly on the life support machine at best, but more like dead.
And the next delivery scheduled (but probably will be delayed) for 2023 for training ships at about 2 a year. Yeah, that’s DEAD.
How’s the feedback on your article from the pundits?
How do you get to comparing money spent on overhead/labor in a shipyard “goes to USA workers” vs aerospace company’s paying high dividends? I can’t even understand what the thesis of your editorial is supposed to be, besides “oh noez, muh global warming cause chair force burns too much oil”.
Philly isn’t the only shipyard in the US
The thesis is that the US Government pours billions into aerospace subsidies, contracts and diplomatic assistance…. But does F all for shipyards.
The oil thing comes in because the government elites are pushing climate decarbonization hard while continuing to subsidize the worst industry for emissions. It’s hypocrisy.
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Thank you for asking after my job performance, but I haven’t finished my popcorn yet.
Not 100 pct sure what you are advocating for her John. I think the lack of significant commercial contracts is a large impact here. As I said above the protected cargo streams that drive to need for JA tonnage have dwindled, and we can have chicken or egg discussions on that. But, in any case without that demand - the yards are left to the Navy, government, and repair. The Navy then has the ability to press the yards down to their alternative - which is a very small profit and keep the lights on. As a tax payer - I have no issue with that.
In contrast - I am assuming the aerospace companies have other business they could do and have better leverage over the government -
But it seems like you are advocating for the Navy, Government to pay more than they should to the yards, so the yards shareholders can make more money. Not sure I can go along with that.
No, not at all.
I’m advocating, first and foremost, to reassess how much money the government is spending on aviation. If Raytheon is giving back enough dividends the last 3 months to build 2 icebreakers then my guess is something is wrong. And are airplanes even as effective today? Ukraine is certainly winning without them.
I’m not advocating that the navy pay more for the yards. I’m asking why are the yards so unprofitable? Something is seriously wrong if a yard has billions in contracts, sunk hundreds of millions into retooling, and has hundreds of acres of prime waterfront real estate sells for $15m.
You could blame the yards but how are so many different yards, run by different companies, in different areas ALL so unprofitable? What do they have in common? Well one thing is they all have the same customer: the US Navy
Having profitable yards doesn’t have to result in added cost to the consumer. Costco and Walmart don’t drive up customer cost because they are profitable… they are profitable because they lower costs.
That’s fine if the Navy and Congress only want to build a few ships per year but that isn’t the plan. All parts of government want to increase the size of the Navy.
You can debate whether building a lot more ships is the best way to spend taxpayer dollars but that debate belongs on a separate thread.
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Some do and some don’t Raytheon is the most profitable and they do own Pratt & Whitney which does have commercial contracts but the vast majority of Raytheon’s profits is for government work.
Conversely General Dynamics owns Gulfsteam Aerospace which is mostly commercial but GD is using the profits from that to keep its shipyards alive…. So GD is only worth a fraction of what many other aircraft builders are worth.
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I read somewhere that a yard owner said that the difference between building a warship or a merchant vessel is like making Lamborghini compared with an 18.wheeler, and he wasn’t talking about the tractor.
Perhaps a glance at political contributions and lobbyist work provides some insight.
Top Lobbying Clients, 2022
| Client/Parent | Total |
|---|---|
| Lockheed Martin |
 $10,123,245 |
| Northrop Grumman |
$8,250,000 |
| United Launch Alliance |
$1,132,590 |
| Saab AB |
$830,000 |
| Sierra Nevada Corp |
$820,000 |
According to Open Secrets.Org, the aerospace industry has spent $421.7 million since 2015 to influence our corrupt congress. Does anyone believe that money came from after tax profits derived from the sale of hardware?
In that same period the shipbuilding industry spent $162 million to buy political favor with the top 3 contributors being the foreign parasitic cruise industry.