Ship Scrapping? Not in My Backyard!

The tiny U.S. ship breaking industry could get a boost from a bill currently before Congress. Herchel Cutler, executive director of the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, says bill HR 265 would direct the U.S. Maritime Administration to dispose of over 100 ships in its reserve fleets, and require them to be scrapped in U.S. yards.

Currently, nearly all ships are broken outside of the U.S. Despite the considerable cost of moving them overseas, they can be sold for four times or more than what they will fetch from a U.S. breaker.

Alan Mesh, the president of Transforma Marine Corp. in Brownsville, Texas, says that his company generally pays about $50 a light ton for a barge or oil rig. When the world market was at its peak, paying $260 per ton for tonnage, his yard was paying about $80 per ton. He says his yard hasn’t broken a large ship in several years.

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