US yards eager for work on shuttle tankers

 02 March 2007 00:01 GMT

US shipyards Nassco in San Diego and Aker Kvaerner Philadelphia are the apparent front runners to provide two shuttle tankers to service Petrobras' planned Cascade-Chinook floating production, storage and offloading vessel in the Gulf of Mexico, writes Anthony Guegel.

Under the US Jones Act, Petrobras would be required to build the shuttle tankers in US yards and crew them with Americans.

Both yards can deliver tankers and are believed to have slots available.

"That's about the way it has to be," said a source with knowledge of the project.

However, the problem is there are practically no US-flagged operating vessels available for such service. The source acknowledged that the market is "thin" for Jones Act tankers.

In addition, the companies operating the tankers would have to be US enterprises.

"They do have to be US-flagged,…

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