Does Sullom Voe Port need a new tug boat?
Council officials are considering whether the Port of Sullom Voe might benefit from a fifth tug, after it was revealed that a stand-in boat service late last year cost nearly a third of a million pounds.
The Strathdee was brought in from Inverness last minute after the Dunter collided with a stationary mooring dolphin in mid-December and was sent south for repairs.
Borrowing the Strathdee and its crew cost £318,000, according to council papers discussed at a Harbour Board meeting this morning (Wednesday).
Shetland South councillor Robbie McGregor was first to raise the prospect that a standby tug “might be more cost effective”.
John Smith, the council’s director of infrastructure, conceded that the cost of stand-in tugs — both in last-minute emergencies and during scheduled dry-docks for any of the other four tugs — “does add up”.
“But having a spare tug would have implications and consequences,” he added — from the cost of keeping the spare insured and its depreciating value over time, to maintaining its registration with the Maritime and Coastguard Agency.
At the request of Lerwick North and Bressay councillor Stephen Leask, Mr Smith said he would calculate the cost of temporary replacement tugs over the past five years.
No matter how many tankers are coming through SVT, four tugs are required to guide the large, unwieldy vessels in.
As recently as 2007 the council kept a fifth tug, but sold it in light of decreasing use from oil companies.
“The throughput at Sullom Voe is declining, and it has to be an economic decision,” said North Isles councillor and Harbour Board chairman Robert Thomson after the meeting.
“It’s got to make money,” he added. “We can’t just buy new tugs for fun and take money from the reserves otherwise I’ll be hung drawn and quartered.”
The Dunter collision is still under investigation by the council, though deputy harbourmaster Ross Gordon said a number of immediate operational changes had been made to prevent similar accidents occurring in future.
Sullom Voe is still the most profitable of the council’s ports by far, but dwindling activity has in recent years run in lockstep with increasingly expensive repairs for an aging fleet.
Tug repairs totalled more than £1.5 million last year, according to records provided in response to a Freedom of Information request from this paper. Before the Dunter‘s accident, it alone had already run up more than half a million pounds.
The latest harbour master’s report, also discussed at this morning’s meeting, includes three separate instances where port staff were stretched thin by medical emergencies, fire alarms or late arrivals — though none of these led to accidents, partly thanks to calm weather at the respective times.
For Mr Thomson, who used to work on a tug himself during the terminal’s heyday, both smaller crews and fewer tugs are part of the unenviable balancing act of keeping SVT in the green as less oil comes through.
“We’ve also got to do try and figure it what the future holds, which is like literally gazing into a crystal ball,” he said.
• Read the full story in this week’s issue of The Shetland Times, out Friday, 7th March.
