'Esvagt Stavanger' finally home

After a long process, ESVAGT has finally got its third X-bow vessel ”Esvagt Stavanger” home from Spain. The vessel has been chartered for Norway.

It does happen that twin delivery drags on so much that siblings are born each on his or her own day. For the twin vessels ”Esvagt Bergen” and ”Esvagt Stavanger” one day will not suffice, however.

Both vessels were ordered at the same time when ESVAGT won the contest for the delivery of vessels for the Statoil operations outside Bergen and Stavanger respectively. The vessels are sister ships and identical seen from a technical point of view – but where ”Esvagt Bergen” had her name ceremony already in March 2011, ”Esvagt Stavanger” only joins the fleet now.

The reason is to be found at the FNM ship building yard at Vigo, Spain, says Kristian Ole Jakobsen, Chief Technical Officer (CTO) in ESVAGT:

- The ship building yard ran into severe financial problems that delayed the project so much that it was in fact possible for ESVAGT to cancel the agreement. But we have a motto in the company – and that is to keep what we promise, and we had promised Statoil two ships. So we have put a lot of effort into keeping the contract with the Spaniards in order to get our vessel, says Kristian Ole Jakobsen.

New yard

ESVAGT spent some 18 months to work out a new contract, which, among other things, involved moving the vessel to another ship building yard in Galicia.

- In order to avoid bankruptcy at the old yard, which would have given us big, big problems, we had to pay them a good deal more for the contract. On the other hand we required that a new yard was entrusted with the task of completing the vessel, and we required a higher guarantee that we could have the vessel that the customer required, says Kristian Ole Jakobsen.

- Statoil had accepted a new deadline, so we did not have to start renegotiating that, he says.

The Astilleros Armón ship yard, also based at Vigo, took over the task and had one year and four months to complete the vessel. They succeeded – even faster than promised, and after one year and six weeks, ESVAGT was able to initiate the process with the handover declarations.

- The vessel has been delivered in a fine quality seen from a craftmanship’s point of view – and it is a good thing to get her home so that we can commence delivering what Statoil expects from us, Says Kristian Ole Jakobsen.

Facts

ESVAGT STAVANGER

Type: Multirole - AHTS

Length: 80 metres

Width: 17 metres

Draught: 6 metres

Tonnage: 3676 GT - 1103 NT

Engine power: 2 x MAK 4000 bkWBollard

Pull: 130 tons

Rescue capacity: 370 people