Reports have been published highlighting the risks to the US offshore energy industry should crewing legislation, the American Offshore Workers Fairness Act, be passed into law by the Senate
Highlighting its report, Global Specialist Offshore Support Vessel Market Overview, and others from the American Clean Power Association and American Petroleum Institute (API), International Marine Contractors Association (IMCA) chief executive Allen Leatt said, “Increasing demand for the development of offshore energy sources is clear for all to see, in both the offshore wind and offshore oil and gas industries.
“The international fleet of construction vessels and their crew will be essential to meet national energy goals, and the proposed crewing legislation will severely degrade the pace of development in the US.
“This message is amply reinforced by the American Clean Power Association in their recent letter signed by 25 chief executives from the offshore wind industry in the US and an economic study recently published by the API.
In its report, IMCA said, “It is a misnomer that the mere existence of foreign-flagged vessels in US waters is a violation of the Jones Act. Foreign-flagged vessels perform several valuable services for the oil and gas and offshore wind markets that have nothing to do with the Jones Act; including deepwater construction work, pipelay, heavy lift, foundation installation, cable installation, piling and wind turbine installation and a myriad of other construction and maintenance activities that do not involve transportation.
“Demand for all categories of offshore construction vessels is growing significantly and is starting to outstrip supply in certain areas. Rates are increasing rapidly, and vessel owners and contractors are selecting only the most favourable regions and projects to work,” IMCA said.
“Specialist offshore construction vessels are critical to the security of supply of deepwater oil and gas in the US. Similarly, without access to international specialist construction vessels, President Biden’s objective of 30 GW of offshore wind by 2030 will not be possible.”
IMCA’s report noted that, in heavy construction rigid pipelay, /cable-lay and heavy-lift “there are no US coastwise vessels capable of performing the work and none being built.”
“In offshore wind,” said IMCA, “there are no coastwise heavy-lift vessels or cable installation vessels capable of performing the required work today and none planned to be built. Only one US coastwise wind turbine installation vessel has been ordered and… due to the cost associated with building them in the US… it is unclear if there will be more orders.”
IMCA noted that, in the light construction vessel market, developers are for the most part deploying US vessels even though foreign vessels can perform this work. For the most part, the foreign light construction vessels that are being deployed are owned by Jones Act owners and operators.
“In the /geotechnical segments, while there are a small number of coastwise vessels and some being built, this is unlikely to fulfil demand,” said IMCA. “In addition, decisions as to whether use a foreign or US vessel are often driven by global need and availability, and the lack of experienced US scientific personnel to crew these vessels. Under current law no foreign citizens are allowed to work aboard a US vessel.
“The huge demand for US mariners, crew and technicians to safely operate these vessels is materially undersupplied and there are not enough training programmes and other initiatives underway to resolve this in the short term. This will be particularly true for the emerging service operation vessel market in the offshore wind industry because this work must be accomplished by coastwise qualified vessels, requiring all US crew.”
Energy & Industrial Advisory Partners’ report for the API, The Economic Impacts of Changes to Vessel Crewing Requirements on the Offshore Energy Industry, stated, “Changing crewing requirements for vessels, many of which are foreign flagged, would significantly reduce vessel availability due to the lack of qualified American and vessel flag marine, support and operations personnel. This change would drastically reduce availability of construction vessels required for offshore energy development.
“A drastic reduction in vessel availability would likely have a severe impact on offshore energy development activity. This reduction in development activity is projected to lead to reduced industry spending, supported employment and GDP, government revenues, oil and natural gas production, and electrical generation capacity.
“Rapidly changing long-standing crewing requirements would immediately and significantly reduce the availability of vessels required for offshore energy development and operations,” said the authors of API report
“In addition, industry’s ability to adapt to these proposed changes would be hindered by overall conditions in the employment market and specific sector trends in marine and offshore energy worker availability.
“These changes would likely fundamentally impact and greatly diminish the development of offshore oil and natural gas and offshore wind projects.
“This would have long-term implications for the offshore vessel market and a reduction in projects will reduce demand for support vessels and the predominantly US crews that man them.”
