Flying the U.S.-flag

   “We like the U.S.-flag business, we think it’s a good business to be in,” said Marc Marling, president of Teras Cargo Transport (America).
   This summer Teras added a new ship, Norfolk, to its fleet of U.S.-flag vessels, unveiling it during a celebration in July at its namesake city.
   The new 19,350-deadweight-ton ship has two 400-metric-ton cranes, one 120-metric-ton crane, a strengthened deck, and is “well-equipped to handle out-of-gauge and heavy cargoes” said Marling, giving Teras “schedule and routing flexibility to serve clients participating in projects or cargo movements throughout the world.”
   As an E3 ice class vessel, Norfolk will be able to serve both commercial and government transport requirements in Antarctica, Greenland and North Sea.
   The new vessel will supplement Teras Cargo Transport’s two other U.S.-flag ships—Houston, with a 7,488-deadweight-ton capacity and two 250-ton cranes, and Seattle, with a 20,587-deadweight-ton capacity and two 60-ton cranes.
   Teras moves a variety of commercial flag-impelled cargoes.
   The company also transports a lot of cargo that is not reserved for U.S.-flag vessels, using barges. These include movements of modular units used in production of liquefied natural gas projects being developed in Eastern Australia, such as BG and Western Australia by Chevron and Sakhalin Island in Russia by ExxonMobil.
   Teras works with leading EPCs—engineering procurement and construction—companies such as Bechtel, Fluor, and Chicago Bridge and Iron.
   A fascinating project Teras worked on involved buying sections of the former Hood Canal Bridge, a floating bridge from Washington state, that had been damaged in a storm, modifying them at a shipyard in Vancouver, and then moving them to Australia where they were used to build a floating terminal, called Port Melville, on the Tiwi Islands north of Darwin.
   In addition to its U.S.-flag ships, Teras has a fleet of 19 Singapore-flagged barges it uses for project work, including 15 375-feet-by-120-feet ocean-going, heavy-deck strengthened barges, that are self-ballasting and four 330-foot-by-100-foot barges.
   Formerly owned by Singapore-based Ezion, Marling said Teras today is 80 percent owned by U.S. management, headed by Joe Sanders, chairman and chief executive officer, and headquartered in Gig Harbor, outside Seattle. Marling works out of Norfolk, Va. Ezion owns a small minority stake in Teras’s international business.
   When American Shipper spoke to Marling, the future of the U.S. Export-Import Bank was unclear, but he said “we fully expect that Ex-Im will be renewed… We’re very supportive of Ex-Im and Ex-Im manufacturers, and we consider them to be some of our best customers and partners.”

This column was published in the September 2015 issue of American Shipper.