I guess my wording was incorrect when I said “no respectable individuals” and I apologize for that.
You are correct. And I can tell you from first hand knowledge that they are a giant pain in the ass to clean. Mostly due to the fact that the larger OSV’s being built these days have tanks that are 20 plus feet tall and they have piping for other vessel functions running thru them. There is no good way to try and clean them other than improvising and redneck engineering at best.
I’m no naval architect or engineer but at some point you would think they would put a larger hatch to allow scaffolding or other means of safely cleaning these tanks.
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Drug Dealers, Addicts, Thieves…sounds like you have described most of the shore based US tank cleaners!
In all seriousness, I worked for an entity that also owned a tank cleaning business at one point in time and the quality of personnel that are available for those jobs is pretty bad. Is it the wage paid? Could be. Is it the working conditions? Could be. Is it the need to stay out of town with other questionable characters for days at a time? Could be.
If these companies were paying $30-40/hr you might have more folks interested but I can tell you that the oil companies cried about every bill, and how expensive it was, with the low paid wages at that time. That’s one of the reasons these companies tried to go to a more automated style of doing things but that just shifts the costs from labor to capital investment. And if the wage scale ever went up to this point, I would have to think every other job in the oilfield would be paying much higher than they are now which leads us back to this being an undesirable job.
I can’t tell you how many times I would hear of vessels coming in for tank cleaning that were still at least half full of mud and sitting in the tanks for weeks at a time. So the argument you provided about “cost analysis being done for every program” may be true but it shows that an analysis can and is flawed at times. You can’t tell me that there isn’t a happy medium b/w these large square tanks and round tanks.
As I mentioned before, a lot of these OSV companies like to boast about the capacity of their boats. When in reality a fair percentage is unusable to begin with.
Did you look at the link to PG-MACS multi-purpose tanks and the video presentation in Post 55?
If not here is a link to the video:
The auto-cleaning system is explained from 8:35 onward. {No need for manpower, drug addicts, immigrant, or others)
Nice system…this is why I said earlier I can’t believe this hasn’t been adopted on a much wider scale.
In the early days the portable Butterworth tank cleaning system was quite an improvement. It still was a dirty job to position the nozzle head at different locations in a tank, quite laborsome and dangerous too. We used caustic soda and later happily pumped it over the side in those days.
Butterworth nozzle head.
I never sailed with the Gunclean fixed tank cleaning van Alfa Laval which was another improvement later on.
The PG-MACS system, by the looks of it, copied the Butterworth system and added a adjustable stick…
The vessel in the video lies absurdly still in the water. I wonder whether there is a flexible pipe connection in real sea conditions. What is the maximum wave height that they can still operate safely? DP helps but the heaving and pitching does not stop. How much up time do they have in a hell hole like the North Sea?
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The video is an animation only. No water, no waves and no motion.
Since the system are used worldwide, incl. in the harsh environments of the North Sea, Barents Sea, off Canada and Tierra del Fuego etc. I assume that the system function in any weather the boat can keep station in. (I have no first hand experience, or heard anything else)
A similar form of the nozzle pictured, on a stand, is what many tank cleaning companies consider “automated cleaning.” Not real automated in my opinion but I guess better than a couple of men with a high volume nozzle…
Nozzles are only a small part of the tank cleaning system. It is the entire process, from pre-washing, using something similar to COW on large tankers, to fully automated and remote controlled washing with whichever media is required, to finally drying the tanks with air.
Treatment of the washing media and disposing of the residue is also an issue to consider. All to be done without major risk to personnel, whether ship’s crew or contractors.
Here is another supplier of dry and liquid tank cleaning systems:
I presume you are talking about this “highly sophisticated” tank cleaning system??:
I saw that Butterworth is still alive and kicking and that since 1925.
Kockum offers an anti pirate defense system based on the rotating steam nozzles. Steam, I don’t know about that, medium or rare… Welcome on board boys and come again!
Polar Jet Blaster
- Highly effective against piracy attacks and hijacking
- Water cannon defense system
- Mounted on each side, around the vessel
- 100% coverage
- Remotely and safely operated from any look out post around the vessel
That’s correct…aren’t you blown away at the sophistication? The real benefit in this system is SOME minimization of confined space man hours and recycling of water, that’s it.
Something along these lines would be considered more automated than any of the nonsense above:
The problem is how practical is this in most scenarios and how many of these units exist. If you can only clean 1 tank at a time on a large OSV then that presents a pretty big problem. And from my past history I’ve been told that the real money to be made in this business is offshore. The dockside facilities take too much capital investment with a “wait and see” approach to work. There isn’t a steady flow of business to predict or budget off of. When you send men and equipment to a rig they are on the clock immediately and for the duration with insignificant amounts of capital needed.
Nothing beats guys with pressure washers due to the fact that they create less waste water. Disposal of waste water is the largest cost when cleaning liquid mud tanks.
Only when the absolutely desperate tank cleaners work for almost nothing with no thought toward future health
Crowley was under the ECO bid… fact. Alyeska chose ECO because they wanted newer equipment and were willing to pay more for it. ECO was over their bid.
Nothing against ECO, but their boats are ugly.
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Alyeska really screwed up. That decision will eventually come back to haunt them.
If they wanted new equipment they should have put that in the bid specs.
Chouest has a competitive advantage with half dozen of their own shipyards and all the hand outs they get from Gulf Coast States to buy the failed shipyards and keep them open.
Crowley also has far too much overhead from too many middle managers and other self-inflicted extra costs.
There is no denying that Crowley had the right people onboard with the right skills and experience and overall they did a very good job.
On one hand I agree that Alyeska should have put new equipment in the bid specs if they wanted them. On the other hand Crowley should have looked at new equipment in the past and had those talks with Alyeska.
Chouest having a competitive advantage is irrelevant because that’s what every business wants over their competition. Chouest worked to get that advantage and Crowley did not (at least in this scenario).
Crowley’s overhead is their disadvantage and became Chouest’s advantage.
I’m not an ECO groupie but business is business and ECO came out ahead on this deal.
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