MAN Diesel PrimeServ, the after-sales arm of the MAN Diesel Group, has recently announced a new contract under its “EMC” Engine Management Concept for marine engines aboard a shuttle tanker operated by the Alaska Tanker Company (ATC).

The contract with the ship management and marine transportation specialist based in Beaverton, Oregon, USA covers the vessel Alaskan Legend and gives PrimeServ delegated engine maintenance responsibility for all four shuttle tankers in the ATC fleet. The tankers have a payload of 1.3 million barrels of oil and feature double-hull construction. They are registered under the U.S. flag, classified by ABS and were all built by the National Steel & Shipbuilding Company (NASSCO) of San Diego, USA, between 2004 and 2006. They operate a shuttle service between the seaward end of the Trans Alaska Pipeline at Port Valdez, Alaska and Puget Sound, Washington, San Francisco and Long Beach, California, and occasionally Barber’s Point, Hawaii, ATC states.

The contracts centre on the vessels’ diesel-electric propulsion systems which are each based on four generator sets powered by inline six-cylinder type 6L48/60 engines from the MAN Diesel works in Augsburg. The gen-sets power two electric motors driving controllable pitch propellers, as well as covering the vessels’ other onboard electrical consumers. They are equipped to run on both heavy fuel oil (HFO) and low sulphur marine diesel oil when in coastal or inland waters.

Details of The Engine Management Concept
MAN Diesel PrimeServ’s EMC agreements encompass a series of delegated service and maintenance arrangements with various scopes of supply. Reflecting a worldwide trend toward corporate specialisation and concentration on core competences, the EMC represents a new departure in maintenance programmes, which have traditionally been conducted by ship owners/operators themselves.

As the specifics of  ships’ maintenance programmes vary, each EMC agreement is tailor-made in close collaboration with the customer and can cover all needs. In the case of the ATC vessels, the contracts encompass delivery of all spare parts for scheduled maintenance and supervision by PrimeServ technicians during major overhauls at 6,000 hour intervals, including turbocharger overhauls. In addition, the contract specifies that PrimeServ provides assistance on technical and operational matters, and contains the provision that online service via remote data transfer will be implemented when an economical, high capacity telecommunications link becomes available.

Supervision of work is provided by the MAN Diesel PrimeServ hub in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, while the PrimeServ headquarters in Augsburg is responsible for logistical planning, including timely delivery of spare parts and technical support of the supervisor.
“The first maintenance contract signed in 2005 for the tanker Alaskan Frontier was seen as a trial to verify whether PrimeServ was capable of meeting ATC’s high expectations,” notes Rudolf Zeltner, Vice President Service Agreements at MAN Diesel PrimeServ in Augsburg. “We were able to demonstrate the added-value of OEM-standard service and, having proved our worth, the first contract served as the model for identical subsequent agreements.”
The contracts represent an innovation in terms of how they are being conducted, Zeltner continues. “They reflect a clear desire by ATC to have an engineer constantly accessible for consultations. The PrimeServ hub in Fort Lauderdale is acting as an ‘extended arm’ of the PrimeServ home base in Augsburg, with one of its highly qualified superintendents covering daily business and overseeing the overhauls.”

In fact, the scope of supply of an EMC agreement can  address issues as diverse as environmental compliance, class compliance, safety, reliability, operating efficiency, maintenance planning/control/cost, resource allocation and spare-parts management. These elements can even include the administration of, and compliance with, the IMO NOx Technical Code and the IMO Safety Management (ISM) Code to facilitate Port State Controls. Accordingly, building on the maintenance contracts, MAN Diesel PrimeServ is also assisting ATC in an intensive study of emissions-reduction methods for the shuttle tanker engines, including aftertreatment.