Times may be tough for shipping but the dredging industry is in surprisingly good health.
Tom Bailey reports
The economic downturn may have brought with it a sense of gloom for many sectors of the maritime industry, but the unglamorous world of dredging has been quietly bucking the trend. And while small cracks are slowly starting to appear in the form of the scaled-down or postponed project here and there, there’s enough evidence to suggest that the outlook will continue to be healthy for some time to come.
The ‘big four’ dredging companies – Netherlands-based Boskalis and Van Oord and Belgian companies DEME and Jan De Nul – certainly exude an air of confidence given their individual investments in fleet expansion.
DEME has announced a €250M ($315M) outlay on three new vessels as part of a programme that will see the company add 15 newbuildings to its books by 2012, including four trailing suction hopper dredgers and four cutter suction dredgers.
Meanwhile, keel laying for Jan De Nul’s cutter suction dredger Ibn Batutta – one of four large self-propelled cutter suction dredgers ordered at Croatian shipyard Uljanik Brodo-gradiliste – took place recently, with delivery expected later this year.
It’s not just dredging companies’ fleets that are getting larger – increased demand is also driving up the size of the individual vessels. Van Oord recently christened Goliath which, as the name suggests, is the world’s largest backhoe dredger. The vessel is part of the company’s fleet renewal programme, which also includes the construction of the 32,000m capacity trailing suction hopper dredger Vox Dubai.
Jan De Nul’s Cristóbal Colón, the world’s largest trailing suction hopper dredger with a hopper capacity of 46,000m, will begin trial dredging next month. The vessel, constructed by Construcciones Navales del Norte at the La Naval shipyard in Sestao, northern Spain, will be joined by sister vessel Leiv Eiriksson later this year.
Meanwhile, existing vessels are expanding. Boskalis’ trailing suction hopper dredger Queen of the Netherlands finished a stint at the Port of Melbourne’s channel deepening project before heading to Singapore in November to be sliced in half and given a 50m-long extension that will increase the vessel’s hopper capacity from 23,400m to 35,500m by the time it’s ready to re-enter service next month.
Several factors are driving demand for dredging, not least the proliferation of energy-related projects. Boskalis has secured three oil- and gas-related contracts in Europe and the Middle East worth about €100M. Two of the jobs are linked to the Nord Stream project, which involves the construction of a pair of 1,220km-long gas pipelines from Russia through the Baltic Sea to northern Germany.
In the Baltic section, Boskalis will team up with Tideway to use 320,000 tonnes of rock to level and stabilise the seabed in preparation for the pipe laying. The company will also work at the shore approach in Germany in partnership with Rohde Nielsen, with work including the dredging and backfilling of a 23km-long trench for the pipes.
The third of the contracts will see Boskalis dredge and backfill a 7km trench for an oil pipeline from the Safaniyah offshore field to mainland Saudi Arabia. Van Oord has clinched an engineering, procurement and construction contract for the Abu Dhabi Crude Oil Pipeline Project, which includes the offshore installation of three pipelines in the Emirate of Fujairah totalling 13km in length.
The need for maintenance dredging to aid navigation is a further factor. These projects are essential under normal circumstances, but even more pressing in the event of the kind of natural disaster suffered at the port of Itajai in Brazil, where flash floods washed away or seriously damaged large sections of infrastructure.
One of the port’s three berths was left crumbling and another completely devastated, while depth of the Itajai channel – which serves the container facilities at Itajai and Portonave – was reduced from a peak of 11m to just 7.1m. A consortium led by Chinese contractor Shanghai Dredging carried out emergency dredging at the site with water injection dredgers Tocantins and Iguazu, helping the port get back on its feet.
Port construction projects also play a huge part in the demand for dredging – and they can be significant money spinners for the dredging companies involved. Boskalis and Van Oord signed a €1.1Bn contract for the first phase of land reclamation at the Port of Rotterdam Authority’s Maasvlakte 2 site last year. The two companies are also working together under a joint venture by the name of Combinatie Delflandse Kust to reinforce the coast as part of the Netherlands’ ‘Weak Links’ programme.
The country has identified 10 problem areas along the coast which are in need of reinforcement to protect against a predicted change in wave patterns, sea level and wind force brought about by factors such as climate change.
However, the picture is not entirely rosy. A few projects are being scaled back in the light of the economic downturn, whether they are pure dredging projects – such as the deepening and widening of the channel leading to Mombasa, which has been postponed for a third time – or port construction programmes like the $5Bn project at Punta Colonet in Baja California, Mexico, which has been pushed back and might yet be cancelled.
While necessary dredging and infrastructure work in the Middle East continues apace, reports are emerging that some non-essential land reclamation projects are being put on hold. But at a time when other areas of shipping face a bleak outlook, the dredging industry looks to have enough momentum to ride out the storm.
Fairplay International Shipping Weekly - Cover Story 26 Feb 2009
Gr.
Dasnaq