General Dynamics NASSCO hosted a keel laying ceremony at its shipyard in Barrio Logan Tuesday for the first vessel in a three-ship fleet of fuel-efficient tankers for a Florida-based shipping company.
Eric Fabrikant, chief operating officer of shipping company SEACOR Holdings, authenticated the keel by welding his initials onto a steel plate during the ceremony.
NASSCO is building three 50,000-deadweight-ton ships with 330,000-barrel cargo capacity. The 610-foot-long tankers are a new “ECO” design, offering improved fuel efficiency and the latest environmental protection features.
“We are proud to achieve another milestone for the first of three ships for SEACOR. These Jones Act ECO-class tankers feature state-of-the-art design technologies and achieve world-leading fuel efficiencies,” said Parker Larson, director of commercial programs for General Dynamics NASSCO.
The ships were designed by DSEC, a subsidiary of Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering of Busan, South Korea. The construction and operation of the new vessels comes under the Jones Act, which requires that ships carrying cargo between U.S. ports be built in U.S. shipyards.
NASSCO has a growing order book for vessels to transport oil, natural gas and other products between U.S. ports and has shifts working around the clock.
