On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me… a partridge in a pear tree, according to the ancient English carol. At Baird Maritime, however, that's the cue for a dozen topical features about the marine industry, again.
Lovers of festive traditions get scrolling, as for the fifth year in a row, we are running through the Twelve Days of Christmas from an offshore energy perspective.
Sunday, December 1, was celebrated by Christians as Advent Sunday this year, so let’s kick off. Last year (here) we opened with the latest on the long-running Scottish ferry fiasco, two Windcat Offshore newbuilding orders, and three Azerbaijani journalists detained.
What has my true love given to me this year? Surely not another arrest warrant for Isabel Dos Santos?
No. This year the authorities are going after the daughter of another dead dictator and her facilitators. It is the now turn of Gulnara Karimova, the daughter of the deceased founding president of Uzbekistan. Whilst she has been in jail in Uzbekistan since 2014 after being convicted of embezzlement, Friday last week saw the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland charge the private bank Lombard Odier and one of its former staff with serious money laundering on behalf of the fallen Uzbek. She has always denied the charges and (surprise) Lombard Odier also denies wrongdoing.
Even more remarkable than yet another (alleged) corruption tale is the news that last month, finally, the first of the two ferries that have been under construction on the Clyde River in Scotland at “troubled” state-owned shipyard Ferguson Marine was delivered.
More than nine years after it was ordered, and six and a half years after the original delivery date, Glen Sannox has, at last, been handed over to Scottish state ferry owner Caledonian Maritime Assets for entry into service on the Western Isles routes for state ferry operator CalMac Ferries in January.
The UK Maritime and Coastguard Agency issued the ship’s passenger certificate and full regulatory approval in the last week of November. And you thought waiting for public transport could be tiresome – the people of the Isle of Arran have been waiting nearly a decade for the new ferry.
Glen Sannox is the UK’s first LNG-capable Ro-Pax ferry, a 102-metre-long vessel powered by two dual-fuel main engines and two auxiliary generators. Unfortunately, there are not yet any LNG refuelling points in any of the ports the vessel will serve, so it will remain running on diesel for the foreseeable future.
Thus, we can wrap up the first stage of this calamitous £400 million (US$509 million) project, with the second vessel Glen Rosa due to be delivered at some point in 2025, allegedly September. Whilst state intervention saved 350 jobs at the yard at a cost of over US$1 million per job over the price of building the ships in Turkey or Poland, there were some redundancies along the way.
Scottish ministers repeatedly changed the CEO at Ferguson, after the yard was taken into bankruptcy administration in August 2019, but none of the politicians themselves resigned after the colossal mismanagement of the contract.
Strange that.
Tim Hair, a new CEO supposedly specialising in turnarounds and with experience as a marine engineer on a cruise ship, was appointed CEO of Ferguson Marine after the first government bail-out. Mr Hair was paid over US$2 million for 18 months of work at the yard before being fired (spare a thought for him this Christmas time).
The replacement CEO, David Tydeman, was also let go by the board earlier this year after failing to meet several revised delivery deadlines for Glen Sannox.
The current chief executive, John Petticrew, is deemed an interim appointee but has now had to extend his contract until April next year because the candidate offered the job as permanent CEO (possibly a Baird Maritime reader) has now dropped out of the race. Mr Petticrew told the BBC that he “would gladly take on the role permanently were it not for his family commitments in Canada.”
I knew seafaring is considered difficult as a career due to time away from home, but presumably Mr Petticrew is paid more than a deckhand on a supply vessel to make it worth his while to endure the hardship?
In the meantime, the yard’s PR adviser Clark has announced it will be stepping away from spinning Ferguson’s woes (never a good sign), and CalMac has just announced another wave of ferry cancellations and service disruptions all the way through to May, as its aging fleet requires emergency repairs and maintenance.
The company’s long-suffering customers and the residents of the Scottish Islands have yet to see Three Ships Come sailing in, on time and on budget.
Oil-rich Namibia went to the polls last week to elect a new president with the governing South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO) party candidate, the nation’s current Vice President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, facing a strong challenge from the former dentist Panduleni Itula, aged 67. The election results are not yet known, and polling was extended in some rural areas after logistical issues with ballots.
SWAPO has governed Namibia since independence from apartheid South Africa in 1990, but its share of the vote has declined rapidly over the last two elections.
One of the factors impacting SWAPO’s popularity has been the perception of corruption, especially from the “Fishrot Scandal,” where two former SWAPO ministers are languishing in jail for their roles in allegedly receiving US$15 million in bribes from the Icelandic fishing company Samherji, along with four conspirators. They were arrested by the Anti-Corruption Commission.
Investigative journalists from Al Jazeera recorded the former fisheries minister Bernhardt Esau asking for a bribe of US$170,000 dollars, which he then requested to be rounded up to US$200,000 to help fund SWAPO. He is videoed saying “we want money, but we must be very careful, otherwise it will be front page news.”
If you only watch one film over Christmas, forget “Wicked” and instead make it “Anatomy of a Bribe,” which exposes the full extent of the wicked Icelanders’ criminal efforts to plunder Namibia’s fisheries.
Clearly, the Tuna Bond scandal in Mozambique is not the only fishing-related bribery in the region. We didn’t cover the story at the time as then Namibia had no proven offshore oil reserves. However, massive discoveries by Shell, TotalEnergies, and Galp in the last three years have changed all that.
As in Mozambique, this fisheries malfeasance matters because Namibia is on the cusp of becoming a major oil and gas producer in the next five years. On X.com, the analyst known as Tommy Deepwater has provided a succinct summary of the Namibian drilling action. On Friday, Galp announced a positive result in the first appraisal well drilled by Saipem’s drillship Santorini, the first of four wells in Galp’s campaign.
Maintaining the rule of law, a vibrant free press, and strong, accountable institutions will be key to determining whether Namibia becomes a new Norway or a new Nigeria when the oil revenues start to flow. Putting two ministers in prison for the Fishrot corruption is an excellent sign that Namibia is on the right track.
Remember, it is the countries where nobody is ever charged for corruption that are more concerning than the ones where ministers are held accountable.
Last week, we looked at the dash for gas in the Black Sea where both TPAO of Turkey and OMV Petrom in Romania are pursuing deepwater gas field developments to reduce reliance on imports.
We observed how Bulgaria, with only a couple of shallow water unmanned gas platforms operated by Petroceltic, was lagging. It is not for want of trying; in 2016, TotalEnergies drilled the first of the three exploration wells in deepwater in the Han Asparuh block off Varna with the rig Noble Globetrotter II using Bourbon’s integrated logistics concept for its supply services. This well, Polshkov-1, was an oil discovery, but was deemed non-commercial, and the two subsequent wells drilled in 2017 and 2019 were dry holes. In 2022, TotalEnergies sold its stake in the block to OMV Petrom, which became the sole holder.
OMV Petrom has now announced last week that it will transfer a 50 per cent non-operating interest to Israel’s NewMed Energy, with the deal expected to close in the first half of 2025. NewMed is already a partner in the Leviathan gas field operated by Chevron off Israel and in the undeveloped Afrodite deepwater gas field in Block 12 off Cyprus.
OMV Petrom says that the Han Asparuh block is “extremely important for ensuring energy security in Bulgaria and the region.” According to NewMed, over US$400 million has been spent on the block to date.
As per the agreement, NewMed will pay up to US$104 million towards the drilling of two new deepwater wells on the block. OMV and NewMed plan to drill a prospect called Vinekh in 1,900 metres of water in the northeast of the block in the fourth quarter of 2025, 160 kilometres from the Bulgarian coast. Vinekh is in the vicinity of OMV’s Neptun Deep gas project offshore Romania and TPAO’s successful Sakarya gas field is across the maritime boundary.
As part of the deal, the CEO of NewMed, Yossi Abu, received a personal stake of 2.5 per cent of the block for free. What more could a CEO ask for Christmas?
The greatest gift they’ll get next year in Bulgaria is a deepwater gas well.
If you have any ideas for festive features for days four to twelve of Christmas, don’t hesitate to email the editor on editor@bairdmaritime.com. Four calling birds and five gold rings can be transformed into what exactly?
Background reading
Our 2020 Twelve Days of Christmas (here and here) featured some the bleak midwinter of the industry downturn, covering Cairn Energy (as was), Esvagt, Vantage Drilling, Shearwater, Swire Pacific Offshore and Seacor, followed by the oil price, floating wind, ammonia fuel cells, Myanmar, Bourbon and Standard Drilling (the predecessor to SD Standard ETC).
Our 2021 Twelve Days of Christmas (here, here, and here) featured Cairn Energy becoming Capricorn Energy, Vantage Drilling, North Star and Vard, Shearwater and Shell, Windcat Workboats, Swire Pacific Offshore, ammonia fuel cells, the oil price, Myanmar, Floating Wind, Bourbon's revival and Standard Drilling.
By Christmas 2022, the industry was firing on all cylinders and our Twelve Days of Christmas (here, here, here, and here) featured twelve floaters a-drilling, as Seadrill bought Aquadrill, eleven per cent of DOF's shareholders a-revolting, ten wind turbine installation vessels a-building, nine million tonnes of LNG a year maybe a-sailing from Indonesia, eight billion cubic feet of gas a day possibly-a-flowing there, and seven Indonesian presidents completely a-sleeping (on the job), six gratuitously unnecessary lift-boat accidents, five stranded deepwater rigs, four subsea vessel deals, three LNG projects moving forward in Asia and East Africa, two hydrogen-powered windfarm support vessels for the Saverys family, and one arrest warrant in a pear tree for "unlucky" Angolan heiress Isabel dos Santos.
For the Twelve Days of Christmas 2023, we covered the Scottish ferry fiasco (again), two Windcat Offshore newbuilding orders, and three Azerbaijani journalists detained (here). Our second week looked at six money laundering countries, five shipping magnates pontificating on future fuels, and four drilling assets for sale (by Seadrill). Then, we had seven PSVs bought by Evangelos Marinakis, eight billion tons of coal a-burning, and nine Vroon vessels sold to CBED, Golden Energy, Rederij Groen and Horizon Offshore here.
We closed with Hercules Supply’s twelve labours, eleven Hornbeck ships working internationally and ten anchor handlers available prompt in Aberdeen, plus a bonus thirteenth day of Christmas for Valaris’ purchase of the drillships Valaris DS-13 and Valaris DS-14 from Hanwha Ocean (formerly Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering) in Korea for the princely sum of US$337 million.
If you liked the Fishrot documentary, for New Year’s Eve, why not sit down with Al Jazeera’s shocking four-parter on “The Gold Mafia,” which exposes the complicity of the UAE and Hong Kong in the embezzlement of Zimbabwe’s gold?
It opens with a crooked Scottish pastor declaring, “As long as you grease the wheels in Africa, there is no issue.” I am not sure the three Magi carried their gold to Bethlehem in oversized hand-carry on Emirates in First Class from Harare, but that could be a modern take on the ancient Bible story.