Work Boat World Editorial – August 2012
Tidewater, the largest and still pioneering offshore service vessel (OSV) owner, put its first pure OSV into service in 1956.

The development of the sector in the intervening fifty-six years until now, as in many parts of the maritime industry, has been phenomenal.

Even more interestingly, the kinds of vessels used and their operational techniques have many convenient similarities. Technological and operational transfers have been reasonably painless.

This has been incredibly timely and fortunate for many fishermen and fishing boat builders and their equipment suppliers. Without the dramatic growth in offshore oil and gas exploration and development, and its need for vessels to service it, their prospects would have been grim indeed.

Further, where the fishing industry was once a great source of inspiration for the designers, builders and equippers of such boats, the OSV sector has now largely taken over that role. Almost every issue of WORK BOAT WORLD highlights exciting new developments in all these fields.

While modern OSVs are increasingly complex, larger and more expensive than their predecessors, they are also generally more economical, versatile, safer, seaworthy and environmentally friendly than before. They tend also to be hotbeds of innovation in terms of shapes, propulsion systems, equipment, systems and internal design.

OSVs are currently very much at the forefront of advances in naval architecture. A lot of money is being invested in the sector and the designers and builders are responding to that very positively.
Until about ten years ago much of the innovation and development occurred in northern Europe and the Gulf of Mexico. More recently, however, this aspect of the industry has become increasingly globalised.

OSVs designed in Singapore, Australia or Norway, for example, are being built in China, Malaysia, the USA, Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, Spain, India, the Netherlands and the Arabian Gulf.

Where once most of the engines, propulsion systems and equipment was American, now it is just as likely to come from Japan, Finland, Germany, France, Sweden, Singapore, Korea, Norway, Spain or the Netherlands.

Vessels owned by American or French or Hong Kong companies might be built in China, crewed by Filipinos and operated off Thailand, Vietnam, Nigeria or Mozambique.

It is difficult to imagine any sector of our industry that is more global or more exciting.

Neil Baird

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