Mare Island dismantler gets no traction on new contract bids:

Four Mothball Fleet ship-dismantling contracts posted Monday shut out a Mare Is-land ship industry newcomer.

Marine Metals of Brownsville, Texas, will scrap and recycle the Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet ships Clamp, Sagamore, Reclaimer and Bolster for $1.85 million, according to the U.S. Maritime Administration's contracts posted online Monday. The four vessels will be cleaned in two batches at the BAE Systems San Francisco Ship Repair starting in mid-May, and then will be towed through the Panama Canal to Texas.

The separate hull-cleaning contracts range from about $144,000 to $153,000 each.

Allied Defense Recycling on Mare Island since late last year had bid on the contracts, its first competitive bid for the company since the Maritime Administration this year awarded the startup company no-bid contracts worth $3.1 million to dismantle the SS President and SS Solon Turman.

Company managing director Jay Anast declined Monday to comment on the contract awards, saying he needed to review them.

In other ship-recycling news, a vessel contracted out to All Star Metals, also in Texas, apparently began to leak after it was cleaned in San Francisco last week, a Maritime Administration spokeswoman wrote in an email. The M/V Lincoln was pumped out and repaired, she said, and is still scheduled for a final trip to Texas.

Source: (Vallejo) Times-Herald. By Jessica A. York. 25 April 2011

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