I can’t image the wages for these ships would be the same as coastwise tankers. I mean they are getting more money from the government than the MSP vessels.
Well….
Then again AMO wages on the MSP funded ARC roros are probably the worst in the industry despite the government 5.3million in gov funding. So second thought I doubt AMO will negotiate raises for these tankers over coastwise tankers.
Aside from aircraft elevators on aircraft carriers and ammunition lifts on aircraft carriers, ammo ships and AOEs I never saw an elevator on a combat ship or fleet logistics ship. We climbed ladders. And yes I had forgotten how steep the SOBs were until having to climb the ladders to the bridge of USS Midway during a visit there (and an aircraft I personally flew sits on her flight deck, my log shows seven flights on that particular BUNO)
Well, with a full tanker crew it makes more sense with the chief mate on call/day working while the 2nd and 3rd assost as directed. This would be rough as a one man band like on the ATBs (though I’d do it in exchanges for 12 hours off)
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Exactly why I switched to tankers 
one man band was too much.
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Looked in ns5… They’ve got two 3Ms. Not sure if that’s the long term plan or not but that’s the case at the moment.
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Brah, we’re talking real working ships here. You know, ships that don’t have 10 people for every job like the navee.
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Brah, I have been a mate on tankers and ATBs for several years and also have been in the deck department of a carrier when I was younger. The whole “more people means less work” assumption is bogus. I have never done a more exhausting job than being on that carrier. Edit: not trying to start anything, just had to get that off my chest, because I know a lot of merchant mariners who have this misconception.
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Crude Oil tankers are not considered militarily useful. They want the ability to have a multitude of cargo segregations, plus be able to have a shallow enough draft to call most ports.
They need large amounts of offshore storage. That’s it.
I get what you’re saying, but that would be too big plus it’s only a single product vessel if they left it as is. The Red Hill storage was around a 450k barrel capacity. Multiple grades of diesel and jet. Not sure if they’ll ever build a new underground storage site, but we will see.
Looks like companies are getting slots for the TSP. If we are keeping count.
OSG - 3 vessels Overseas Santorini, Mykonos, and Sun Coast
Crowley - 3 vessels Stena Immaculate, Imperative, Impeccable
USMMI (Maersk) - 1 vessel Badlands Trader
Thoughts on who might be getting last 3 slots or if this is all that are going to participate?
Heard Seabulk received the other 3.
This MARAD administration is horrible at updating their website and notifying the public. @john was spot on regarding his article about the MARAD administrator.
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Marad last updated their TSP page in april, but from company & union announcements here is the starting line up.
- Overseas Sun Coast
- Overseas Mykonos
- Overseas Santorini
- Stena Immaculate
- Stena Imperative
- Stena Impeccable
- TORM Timothy
- TORM Thor
- TORM Thunder
- Badlands Trader
No surprises. That makes OSG, Crowley, Seabulk, and USMMI the companies managing the first 10 slots. From my understanding OSG and USMMI own these vessels and built/purchased them just for the program, while crowley and seabulk were the ones that had to find foreign partnerships to get that much tonnage. I know nothing about the business of side of shipping but saw Seaways has 37 MR tankers and Maersk 12, are these strictly management contracts or is there a possibility of them easily transitioning to fill out a large chunk of the next 10 slots? Although, I am hoping we see some new names filling out the next spots.
I also hope we see some other company names filling out the next 10 spots but it won’t be until probably next July until we know. Also found it interesting that the navy wants shallow draft tankers.
Read this article https://breakingdefense.com/2023/06/transcom-looking-for-more-tankers-to-move-fuel-in-shallower-water-between-pacific-island-chains/?amp=1
Also since patriot already has two shallow draft tankers we most likely will only see the addition of 8 tankers into the fleet
Seaways is the old foreign OSG fleet. When OSG went through bankruptcy they sold off/wrote off the foreign fleet and changed the name. The Tampa office has nothing to do with those ships anymore, so I would be surprised if any of those ships were brought into the TSP.
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Be interesting to know the actual owners of these ships.
You can find all details for vessels worldwide on Equasis:
https://www.equasis.org/EquasisWeb/public/HomePage?fs=About
Or on:
IMO Global Integrated Shipping Information System (GISIS)
https://gisis.imo.org/
If tankers are your only interest, there is also Q88:
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Interesting article. Thats a much more niche/limiting bid ask than the previous one was. With it basically being the capabilitity to hold cargo and discharge it…to another ship? This new ask must really limit profitability when not on uncle Sam’s time and dime. If the Pax, assuming they get a waiver since its too old, and the Haina Patriot join the program, it means losing their long term time charters. Some actuary will have to run the numbers on if a $6M stipend and the likelihood of government voyage charters is worth giving that charter up. I am curious what the answer is.
Looking at the size of ships they want vs. fleet availability, Crowley and Seabulk will not be getting ships that meet that ask from Stena or Torm. Some scuttlebutt says that they are expecting to still get slots, but with more MR tankers. Only about a 43k difference in DWT from what they are wanting… I am really interested to see what happens.
So when will tanker pay go up for crew?
That’s a good question considering MMP has been more willing to race to the bottom than AMO over the past several years so I’m not sure that’s going to happen. I hate to say it but any contract that isn’t “Me too” off of a MEBA contract sucks. SLNC which is MMP top to bottom sucks and I bet the Patriot was settled before MEBA. MMP leadership were going to settle for way less on the Seacor contracts until they were able to see MEBAs agreement. Luckily they didn’t sign before MEBA did and were able to Me too once again. But still some contracts have bonus and other things for the engineers that MMP hasn’t been able to guarantee for the deck guys so in reality several ships have engineers making more despite Me Too-ing the base wages and benefits. Any young kid with a PIC wanting to work on tankers would be a fool to join MMP the wages for the tankers are the lowest in the industry (yes even lower than AMO!) and they wonder why they can’t fill the jobs!
If the wages for tankers in the TSP is to go up, all unions should get together and do a tripartite agreement for standard wages across the board like the MARAD FOS.