Oslo: The dire times for Norwegian offshore support vessel (OSV) players are seeing more and more ships sold and laid up. Solstad Offshore has just announced that is has been drastically cutting back its fleet. It has sold the AHTS Normand Jarl, built in 1985. In addition, a memorandum of agreement (MOA) has been signed for sale of the AHTS Normand Skarven, built in 1986, with expected delivery during June.
Solstad Offshore owns 72.5% of Normand Skarven whilst Normand Jarl is 100% owned.
There will be a minor booked gain on the sales, but a positive cash effect of approximately NOK45m.
Citing the weak PSV segment, Solstad Offshore has also decided to put the PSVs Normand Skipper and Normand Vester into lay-up. Normand Skipper is currently trading the North Sea spot market while Normand Vester is due to end a long-term contract in Brazil during June and will go into lay-up thereafter.
As a consequence of the two sales and lay-ups, about 50 offshore employees will be made redundant.
“The redundancies are very regrettable,” said Lars Peder Solstad, ceo of Solstad Offshore.
Splash’s offshore columnist, Mike Meade, who heads up brokerage M3 Marine, commented earlier this week: “Norway has suffered in the oil shock from having too many ships, the vast majority of which are also just too expensive. There has been and will continue to be a lot of pain in the Norwegian offshore sector, ships being laid up and people being laid off by the thousands.”
