Issue link: http://digital.nexsitepublishing.com/i/1065449
2 CROWLEY MARITIME CORPORATION Eighty years after Crowley began its storied history of transporting petroleum with a single specially designed barge, the company in 2018 joined the ranks of major oil companies by entering the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Service (TAPS) trade. This was made possible through the acquisition of three tankers from SeaRiver Maritime Inc. that added 2 million barrels of capacity to Crowley's owned and/or operated tank vessel fleet, already the largest in the United States. As part of the agreement, all three purchased vessels are chartered back to SeaRiver under varying multi-year terms and are operated by a new Crowley subsidiary, Crowley Alaska Tankers (CAT), LLC, part of the Crowley Shipping business unit. The ships were also renamed. Liberty Bay became Washington; Eagle Bay became California; and SR American Progress was renamed Oregon. The tankers Washington and California each have a capacity of 818,000 barrels and are in the TAPS trade. The tanker Oregon, which has a capacity of 342,000 barrels, transports refined petroleum between the U.S. Gulf and East Coast. The California and Washington are more than twice the size of Crowley's 330,000-barrel product tankers and are transporting crude from Valdez, Alaska, the end of the pipeline, to U.S. West Coast refineries. In a typical operating cycle, the California and Washington enter Prince William Sound in a ballast condition, or empty. After arrival, the tankers are usually docked for less than 24 hours while crude oil is loaded from shoreside storage tanks into the vessel's cargo tanks. After loading, the vessels depart Valdez Marine Terminal accompanied by two escort tugs for the 69-mile transit through the Valdez Narrows and waters of Prince William Sound. CROWLEY SHIPPING Acquisition of three SeaRiver Maritime vessels by Crowley Alaska Tankers, LLC, adds 2 million barrels of capacity to the U.S.'s largest fleet. OPERATOR: CROWLEY JOINS NEW SHIPS, EXPERIENCED Story by David DeCamp OIL MAJORS IN ALASKA