Weekly News Summary For October 27 - November 2, 2008:
Apprentice Mate John Paul Bavaret II said he was covering for his captain, who left the boat three days earlier to attend to personal problems with his girlfriend in Illinois, when he steered the push boat Mel Oliver and its barge into the path of the tanker Tintomara on July 23.
In the much-anticipated testimony at a Coast Guard hearing in New Orleans, Bavaret said Terry Carver, the licensed master of the Mel Oliver, got off the boat on July 20 near a ferry dock in Reserve, La., promising to return in 18 hours.
Several times in the past, Bavaret said he covered for Carver and hoped Carver would cover for him so he could get off early that hitch. The apprentice mate said he began to be nervous about the arrangement, but agreed to cover for Carver again when the captain said he “needed a favor” three days prior to the accident.
When Carver did not return as promised, Bavaret said he called Carver, asking him to return to the boat because of the heavy workload. The apprentice mate said he was pulling double watches to cover for Carver, catching naps during down time.
In the days just prior to the accident, Bavaret testified he lied to DRD Towing officials, operators of the Mel Oliver, telling them Carver was onboard. Bavaret said signed the official log book for Carver, The Times-Picayune newspaper reported. The log book was produced in court…
The October 22 shipment of 12 heavy pieces of the next generation of space vehicles from Wellsville, Ohio, to Port Canaveral, Fla., provided many historic “firsts.”
It was the first time NASA’s John Glenn Research Center agreed to move their oversized cargo by water, said Dean White, marine superintendent at Gulf Caribe Maritime Inc., whose roll-on / roll-off vessel the Delta Mariner was custom-built to carry space shuttle parts.
White said he spent two years putting the deal together. The special gantry crane that would move the parts onto the vessel hadn’t even been built when he began speaking with the NASA team.
As it turned out, the spacecraft parts were the first piece of cargo handled at the new Columbiana County cargo facility, and the first cargo lifted by the crane. It was also the first time the Delta Mariner had been so far up the Ohio River. The unique-looking vessel usually inspires photos and postings on river blogs when it passes….
Horizon Shipbuilding Inc. of Bayou la Batre, Ala., was awarded the title of Alabama Exporter of the Year from the U.S. Small Business Administration for 2008.
Horizon, which makes specialized work boats for the oil and offshore services industries, is Bayou la Batre’s largest employer. Horizon has about 240 workers, out of the town’s total shipbuilding work force of about 1,000.
The award was presented in September at a ceremony that also launched the mv. Chinyelugo, a 170-foot aluminum crew boat for the Nigerian offshore oil market. Horizon’s Ron Gunter said the Chinyelugo reported into Lagos harbor on October 21. Its sister boat, the Ugodie, will be ready by January 2009. Both are 170 feet long and designed to carry either fuel or water, said Gunter.
Horizon is currently working on two 182-foot boats for Mexico, the Isla Jaina, due for delivery in July 2009, and the Isla Ave, scheduled for October 2009.
“It was our Nigerian and Mexican business that got the attention of the Small Business Administration,” said Horizon’s Nancy Buckalew….
AEP River Operations christened the 6,000 hp. mv. Chuck Zebula, built by Quality Shipyards, September 12 in Pittsburgh.
The new towboat’s namesake, who had just been promoted to senior vice president and treasurer of one of the nation’s largest utility companies, admitted before the christening to being about as nervous as he’d ever been. A seasoned speaker, he had addressed more than his share of audiences, but this was different, he said privately before the ceremony. He thought he might become emotional, standing on the boat bearing his name. And he did, briefly, when he thanked his mother and father for providing him with so many opportunities, and his wife and three children for their support. His father was a coal miner.
Family, friends and faith are the cornerstones of his success, Zebula told the large crowd at Station Square, as he outlined a career that began as a process engineer, soon after graduating from Carnegie Mellon University in 1985 with a master’s degree in industrial management. He did his undergraduate work at Penn State, where he earned a degree in mining engineering, and then a master of science degree in mineral processing.
At the start of his career, from the 14th floor of a downtown Pittsburgh office building, he watched tows pass the Point, and he said he still marvels today at the efficiency with which a single 15-barge tow can transport 30,000 tons, or $3 million worth, of coal.
A decade-long tenure at Kaiser Engineers and GAF Corporation led to a stint with an economic and management-consulting firm in Washington, D.C., where he worked on a number of projects in the energy and environmental field. In 1998, he joined American Electric Power…
A team of three boats helped move an unusual load from the Tulsa Port of Catoosa on a bright October week. The load consisted of three massive coker furnaces destined for an expanding oil refinery in Port Arthur, Texas. The coker furnaces moved out from Catoosa on October 16 and transited through the Arkansas River’s Lock and Dam 18 on October 17 at about noon.
The three coker furnace units measure 76 feet long and 22 feet wide, but it was their 44-foot height that required each tow to have two pushboats—one to steer, one to push, and one tug to assist or pull.
This first shipment used the Miss Nicole from Matthews Marine (built 1981, 3,000 hp.); the Lonnie M. Bell from United Tug (built 1974, 1,200 hp.); and Eckstein Marine’s Capt. Dick Morton (built 1952, 2,400 hp.), for 6,600 total horsepower.
The furnaces, which extract gasoline, pitch, petroleum coke (pet coke) and other products from petroleum, were assembled in Tulsa by Petro-Chem Development Company Inc., a world-leading producer of fired heaters and furnaces for oil refineries that has produced 11,000 process furnaces for 500 clients since its 1939 founding…
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