Crowley adds two heavylift barges to fleet

Barges will aimed at servicing customers in the Asia-Pacific region.    Crowley Maritime said it had received delivery of two new heavy-lift, ballastable deck barges for use by clients in the Asia-Pacific region. The company indicated it may acquire two additional similar barges.
   The new barges will be contracted and managed from the company’s recently opened Singapore office.
   Crowley said the barges will allow it to better support regional customers building large-scale onshore and offshore projects in the oil and gas, and mining industries.
   These new 400-foot-by-120-foot barges are moored in Batam, Indonesia. They have 25-foot (7.6-meter) side shells, which provide both the capacity and deck strength (up to 4,200 pounds per square foot or 25 tons per square meter) needed to accommodate larger drilling and production units used for deepwater offshore energy exploration and development. They are designed with more robust ballast systems to deal with high tidal ranges found in the region’s load and discharge ports and have higher internal strength which allows tolerance when ballasting to the seabed, fully loaded — where tidal movement can be problematic.
   The barges are ABS classed, with an approximate deadweight capacity of 20,000 metric tons. Both were designed by Crowley’s Seattle-based, naval architecture and marine engineering subsidiary Jensen Maritime and were constructed in China by Seabridge Marine Contractors Ltd/Jiangsu Yangzijang Shipbuilding Co., Ltd.