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Third double-hulled tanker joins ConocoPhillips� Alaska fleet
Kristen Nelson Petroleum News editor-in-chief
The third of five double-hulled tankers for the Alaska crude trade has been delivered to Polar Tankers Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of ConocoPhillips, and will join the ConocoPhillips U.S. flag fleet carrying crude oil from Alaska to the West Coast and Hawaii.
ConocoPhillips said Sept. 4 that Polar Tankers took delivery of the Polar Discovery the first week in September. The tanker will join the Polar Endeavour and the Polar Resolution, which began service in 2001 and 2002.
The tankers are being built at Northrop Grumman Ship Systems in Avondale, La., which has two more tankers under construction for Polar Tankers and scheduled for delivery in 2004 and 2005: the Polar Adventure and the Polar Enterprise. ConocoPhillips said its entire U.S. flag tanker fleet will be double hulled by 2008.
�The Polar Discovery will begin service for the Alaska trade later this year,� ConocoPhillips Alaska spokeswoman Dawn Patience told Petroleum News Sept. 8.
The Endeavour class vessels have double hulls with 10 feet of space between the inner and outer hulls, two independent engine rooms, redundant propulsion and twin steering systems, a bow thruster and state of the art navigation systems, the company said.
ConocoPhillips said teams from Northrop Grumman and ConocoPhillips expedited the construction of the Polar Discovery, which successfully completed its sea trials significantly ahead of its revised delivery date. BP also has tankers on order ConocoPhillips and Polar Tankers predecessors ARCO and ARCO Marine announced orders for the first two tankers in 1997, with options for three additional vessels. ARCO ordered the third tanker in 1998. Phillips Petroleum ordered the fourth tanker in 2000 and the fifth in 2001. Options for two additional tankers were not exercised. �The current contracts with Avondale are for five tankers,� Patience said.
The new tankers meet the requirements of the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 that single hull tankers be phased out. ARCO officials said in 1997 that these are the first new crude carriers to be designed and built after the implementation of OPA '90.
BP ordered three double hulled tankers in 2000 and a fourth in 2001, all described as �Alaska class� tankers to be built by National Steel and Shipbuilding Co. The first tanker was due to be delivered in 2003.
BP Exploration (Alaska) spokesman Daren Beaudo told Petroleum News Sept. 10 the first of the new BP tankers is now scheduled for delivery in June 2004, the second in late 2004 or early 2005 and the other two in 2005-06.
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