Seafarers-contracted companies have been selected for the first wave of enrollments in the new U.S. Tanker Security Program (TSP).
The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) recently announced the first nine ships for the program. According to DOT, those vessels (plus one that has yet to be selected) will serve as “a fleet of active, commercially viable, militarily useful, privately owned product tank vessels of the United States that will meet national defense and other security requirements and maintain a United States presence in international commercial shipping.”
DOT Secretary Pete Buttigieg stated, “Today we are announcing the first ships to join the Tanker Security Program, which will help strengthen both our supply chains and our national security by delivering fuel to our armed forces around the world while creating hundreds of good jobs for American mariners.”
Three mid-range tankers each have been enrolled from Overseas Shipholding Group, Inc. (OSG), Crowley-Stena Marine Solutions, LLC (a joint venture), and Seabulk Tankers, Inc.
The Crowley-Stena vessels, as previously reported in the LOG, are the Stena Immaculate, Stena Imperative and Stena Impeccable. Seabulk has joined forces with international energy transporter Torm, and will flag in the ships Thunder, Thor, and Timothy to fill three slots in the TSP lineup. OSG’s approved vessels include the Overseas Santorini, Overseas Mykonos, and Overseas Sun Coast. “The TSP accomplishes two key maritime sealift objectives: It grows our U.S.-flagged fleet and it significantly expands our ability to deliver vital fuel supplies to support military missions across the globe,” said Maritime Administrator Ann Phillips. “Implementation of the TSP is a significant milestone for MARAD and the U.S. maritime industry.”
Strongly backed by the SIU, the TSP was established by the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, and enables the DOT to establish an initial fleet of 10 U.S.-flagged tankers. According to news reports, the U.S. Navy’s Military Sealift Command currently has just five long-term chartered tankers it uses to move fuel.
“Though the U.S. military can always hire tankers on the open market, it’s possible that foreign-flagged ships would not be as readily available in a conflict or emergency,” said Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. Clark co-authored a 2020 Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments study that helped prompt the TSP’s creation.
“The idea is the government wants to have some U.S.-flagged and U.S.-owned tankers that it can turn to and know that, ‘I’ve got at least these I can hire,’ and then they pay those companies to do that so that those tankers will be on call,” said Clark.
The TSP is patterned after the U.S. Maritime Security Program (MSP), a highly regarded program that has been in place since the mid-1990s. The MSP helps ensure the availability of American-flag ships and U.S. crews in times of crisis.
Selection of the new mid-range tankers coincides with the significant growth in petroleum exports, according to news reports. Geopolitics also may have played a role in facilitating the TSP implementation process. A Brown University Watson Institute study indicates that that prior to Russia’s war on Ukraine, nearly 30% of fuel consumption at European U.S. military installations had been sourced from Russia based on host-country imports.
There has also been discussion of adding another 10 tankers to the TSP in the next fiscal year as the Department of Defense looks to increase its international refueling operations. Clark predicts that the program will grow.
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