Oldendorff Centenary Book - Flipbook - Page 254
ermany’s most
G
important private
shipowner had
long had the
idea of having
tankers, and
when the German
tanker building
programme came,
he took action.
Users of petroleum fuels became
cost and consumption conscious, and
exploitation of alternative sources
of energy gathered momentum.
Those were the makings of the
tanker catastrophe. The trickle
of crude oil emanating from the
Persian Gulf gave employment
to only a fraction of the existing
tanker fleet. Freight rates dropped
to abysmal depths, and tanker
newbuildings frequently performed
just one voyage, from the builders’
yard into layup, to await better
days. Even though better days did
in fact come and more, and cheaper,
oil was being shipped as OPEC
members violated self-imposed
restrictions, the fervently wishedfor tanker boom never repeated
itself. Egon Oldendorff vainly tried
to put on emergency brakes through
either cancelling the newbuilding
orders or switching to other types
of vessels. In a lengthy article in the
Lübecker Nachrichten daily, Konrad
TT Niedersachsen (380,000 tdw built 1997) discharging crude oil in Rotterdam
250
Böttcher wrote:
“Tanker newbuilding SCHLESWIGHOLSTEIN, christened at Kiel on
12 December 1975 by Mrs Margot
Stoltenberg, wife of the then
Schleswig-Holstein prime minister
Gerhard Stoltenberg, sports a
funnel mark showing a white T
in a blue band. The reason is that
a new owning company, TraveSchiffahrtsgesellschaft mbH & Co.
KG of Lübeck, had been founded for
the two largest ships yet in Lübeck
shipping history. Egon Oldendorff is
the managing owner and has shares
in the company. The tanker will
never be within eyesight of its home
port. Drawing 20.6m of water and
at 325.5m loa and 49m width the
vessel is not even the largest tanker
of them all. She could transit the
Suez Canal in ballast condition.
“When in 1972, long before the oil
shock, the Federal Government
and numerous banks demanded
stronger German participation in
