Able UK Ltd - Application For Planning Permission To Reinstate Facilities At Graythorp - An Objection

1 General

I object to the application Able UK Ltd has made to be granted planning permission to reinstate its facility at Graythorp.

The permission if approved, along with the public monies Able UK Ltd is also seeking, would allow Able UK Ltd to decommissioning the four American Warships from the James River Reserve Fleet currently laid up in the basin and the nine other ships allocated to it by the same contract currently laid up in the USA.

I am a resident of Hartlepool and a Chartered Engineer with 25 years experience and training associated with Oil and Gas construction both on and offshore in the UK & overseas. I have particular experience of the construction & decommissioning of structures such as oil rig Topsides, Jackets & Ships. As such I believe I am in a position to comment on this application and the spin that has been generated in the media with respect to the jobs benefits this enterprise will bring, if it is successful, with something more than a layman’s knowledge.

I would like to bring to your attention some facts that exist about Able UK Ltd that I believe seriously undermine a number of the claims that it has made about its expertise, its integrity and its ability to deliver the promised jobs bonus connected to its latest planning application. These facts call into question Able UK Ltd’s suitability to safely and responsibly dismantle ships containing substances hazardous to health in the environs of Hartlepool.

It is important to understand that I do not have a problem with the principal of ship decommissioning in the UK, I understand the process intimately, and if done correctly, it will not present a problem. My objection is to Able UK Ltd undertaking the work. I do not think, given what I know first hand about this company, that it can do the work correctly.

Further more, as a tax payer, I also object to the confidence trick I feel Able UK Ltd and its supporters are perpetrating by also applying for the public monies and grants necessary to reinstate the decrepit facilities at Graythorp (£20 Million + is needed) particularly the dry dock, on the promise of the creation of hundreds of long term ship building and wind turbine construction jobs. Those jobs will never materialise for reasons I will detail in this document.

The reinstatement of a dry dock at Graythorp is deemed essential to decommission the ships under the terms of the contract Able UK has with the US government. However, there are four existing dry docks on the river Tyne that are large enough to take these ships and fit for purpose for ship decommissioning activities. These dry docks are currently without work.

Why do we need to pay for the creation of more of the same facilities when we are not using the ones we already have? Surely such expenditure of tax payers money under these circumstances would represent a scandalous waste of money?

2 Background

I have no political or organisational affiliations to cloud my view, but in order to clarify my position, please note that I am a former employee of Able UK Ltd, appointed at senior Managerial level. I reported directly to Peter Stephenson the company MD, and as such have had a profound insight into the company’s methods of working. I resigned from the company in disgust, after the same Peter Stephenson, personally broke his company’s contract with me, and reneged on pledges of a directorship with the company.

I was appointed as the Project Manager of the “Offshore Division” of Able UK in July 1999, leaving a lucrative position in the Middle East to do so, my first tasks were to decommission the NAM K11 Topside and Jacket (a small oil rig previously owned by the Dutch National Oil Company ‘NAM’), and to move a sunken and severely damaged 5,000 tonne, steel reinforced concrete, dry dock gate (55m long x 14m high x 14m wide) that was partially blocking the entrance to Graythorp basin and was a hazard to the ships engaged in importing cars through the basin at that time, this gate is one of a pair that lie in the basin to this day.
I resigned in February 2000, 6 weeks after the decommissioning was successfully completed on time and in budget and the dry dock gate removed as a hazard to shipping.

It is important to note that I was the only employee in the “Offshore Division” in that time period; it was an unnecessary augmentation to my job title, for something that did not in fact exist except on paper. However a company claiming to have an ‘Offshore Division’ presents a different image when its organisation chart is paraded to clients and visitors, and image is everything at Able UK.

The ‘front’ or outward ‘appearance’ of Able UK was something very important to Mr Stephenson, and great steps were taken by him to present the Company to the outside world as ‘normal’. You could argue that such a stance should be considered appropriate for the founder and MD of a company, and I would agree if it were not for the facts of my own experience with this company.

Able UK was, in my opinion, anything but normal. (I have worked for a lot of companies, including Rolls Royce, British Steel, Taylor Woodrow, and Cooper Cameron, among others, all respected companies listed on the stock exchange). The abnormality originated from the pervading atmosphere of a control/blame culture and secrecy. I believe this culture was indelibly stamped across the company and stemmed from the routine corner cutting and appalling working practices that were an ingrained feature of the company’s business methods, tempered by the fear of being caught and as such the absolute need to keep those practices from coming to light.

3 Health Safety and the Environment

My resignation followed weeks of repeatedly clashing with Mr Stephenson over health and safety issues, connected with:-

• The lack of provision by the company of Personal Protective Equipment in connection with workers handling contaminated oil, diesel, asbestos, and pipe work contaminated by radio-active isotopes. It was not because the company did not have such PPE, it did. It would issue boiler suites, gloves, hard hats, eye protection, & faces masks when clients visited site, but then cynically collected them back in when they left.

• The deliberate non-reporting of a serious accident to the Health & Safety Executive, as required by law or the client NAM as required by the contract Able had with NAM. The accident occurred on the K11 oil rig Jacket decommissioning work in 1999. This serious accident, involving a spinal injury, that by good luck was not a fatality, it occurred just before I took up my position with Able UK, but I was aware of the facts surrounding the accident as the father of the victim related the events to me. This man was on site and observed the incident first hand. I was aware the bad news was suppressed and finally buried. The young worker never returned to work in my time there (6 months).

• Outrageously dangerous working practices and poor quality of decision making and leadership from long term senior employees and associates of Mr Stephenson, responsible for direct workforce supervision.

• Poor worker facilities - a portacabin rest room in the yard at the Head Office in Billingham that had only half a roof, no lighting and only stove heating in winter 1999.

• Further confrontations ensued connected to the use of unqualified personnel in diving operations required to seal submerged, broken compartment walls of the aforementioned dock gate sunk in the basin at ‘TERRC’. Unemployed ex-miners were illegally used in Graythorp basin, from July through to September 1999. These men were only equipped with sports diving equipment totally unsuitable for the work they were undertaking. The men were paid cash in hand at a rate of £5 per hour.

• The HSE are aware of this allegation and partially investigated it in 2003 when the Ghost Ships issue came to light. The claims Able UK made in the media at the time prompted me to contact them. The HSE did speak to the lead diver who denied he ever undertook the work, (though why I should have his mobile and home phone numbers under the circumstances was not questioned). Further action was considered impractical under those conditions and the passage of time that had lapsed.

• It is worth noting that on one occasion these ‘divers’ were actually caught prior to entering the water in the August of that year by a government Health and Safety inspector, who arrived on site without notice. The men were dressed in dry-suites when confronted by the inspector so denial of their intent to enter the water was impossible, but they had managed to hide their Scuba equipment before discovery.

• The company informed the inspector that the men were ‘wet fitters’ and not divers, and were engaged in fixing tarpaulins to the dock gate wall at surface level as the tide rose and fell. This tarpaulin outer ‘seal’ was laid over temporary dams constructed of scaffold and boards, which these divers had also built and repaired. The dams plugged the very large holes (you could drive a transit van through some of them) in the dock gate wall, prior to it being pumped out, floated and removed. This work was a substantial undertaking and took weeks and several attempts to complete, as the gate was long (55m) and every one of the 9 front compartment walls was broken. The fact that the ‘seal’ also needed to be applied some 7-8m below the water line at high tide, which could only be done by divers, was not questioned and the matter was quietly dropped.

To establish my level of responsibility at Able UK please note that I would meet with Mr Stephenson on a daily basis in the period I have stated, not only to report progress on projects but also to advise in a technical capacity on various engineering issues, being the Senior Engineer in the Company. I would also speak on behalf of the company with clients, some UK based, some from overseas when they would visit Able House for meetings. I was the technical voice and face of the company.

I was also privileged to hear Peter Stephenson address the same clients in the those meetings, so I would consider myself knowledgeable in the companies operations at the time I worked for it and became a keen student of Mr Stephenson’s views on the past history of the company its future development, his preferred ways of working, and the methods he used to communicate those ideas, so I am very aware of how this man manipulates the presentation of himself and his company. However, as one who had seen operations at Able UK first hand, there was for me, a huge gap in credibility, in the way the company actually worked and how it was presented to ‘guests’.

While allowances can be made for Mr Stephenson’s unorthodox style of presentation, which is somewhat unique in my experience, but no less valid for that, it still did not, no matter how you examined it, match the image with the reality of Able UK’s working practices. Both were outstanding, the former outstandingly good, the latter outstandingly bad.

As stated I have spent most of my working life in the construction and manufacturing sectors of the oil and gas industry, not only in the UK, but also in several countries overseas, most do not have the benefits of UK type legislation and enforcement with respect to worker safety, good working practices etc. I would count Turkmenistan in the former Soviet Union, Qatar in the Middle East, China and Malaysia in the Far East among such places.

What I observed during my time at Able UK matched and surpassed, in my opinion, the worst I had seen working overseas with respect to Health, Safety, worker welfare and environmental care. Overseas you can alter bad working practices by your authority, within Able, Supervisors (the long term friends and associates of the MD) in the company worked with impunity to established custom and practice, regardless of written and verbal instructions from Management.
I would state that these Supervisors revelled in their immunity from sanction while carrying out or encouraging others to carry out work in a manner that was frankly dangerous, outrageously irresponsible and represented a dereliction of duty unsurpassed in my experience. As a Manger you did what you could to prevent these activities where you could, but you could not be on site all the time.

In many cases the evidence of such activities was the damage to equipment or wreckage left in the wake of yet another ‘time saving’ idea that luckily had not killed or injured those undertaking the action.

I would like to cite specific examples of the poor regard paid to health and safety at Able UK that bares testimony to poor supervision, poor understanding of the consequences of using damaged equipment or the use of equipment in an improper manner that rendered it dangerous.

• Rigging equipment – The workforce used wire ropes and slings in lifting and demolition activities (Pulling) that were kinked, bird-caged, frayed, corroded and completely out of certification. This included the use of wire rope clips on wire ropes used in dynamic application, for which they are competently unsuitable, though it’s cheap!

• The use of hooks with safety gates missing. The use of shackles that were composites of whatever material was available to make them work. The pins on these shackles were often just bolts that were inappropriate for use with the rest of the tool.

• Shackles were used that were deformed and mechanically damaged without regard, and in the case of one 25 tonne SWL rated shackle, its unsuitability for the application it was used for was demonstrated as it was catastrophically destroyed through the application of a shock dynamic load delivered to it by a lorry.

• The lorry was being used to pull down a section of K11 oil rig Topside structure that was itself hanging from its supporting structure about 10 metres above ground level. The lorry was used as the demolition crew had failed to drop the section properly and had rendered the remaining 500 tonne structure unstable.

• The process started off correctly with the wire pulled taught and the lorry attempting to drive away from the structure and pull it down through its weight and power. This was unsuccessful as the lorry was not powerful enough. It was then decided by the ‘Supervisors’ to back the wagon up to the structure and drive away as quickly as possible. When the lorry reached the end of its slack rope it snapped a far greater force through the structure, in much the same way as a hammer works, i.e. momentum. The lorry was pulled into the air by the shock of this outrageous demolition method and it was only a matter of time before something gave way. On the third occasion, the whole structure toppled over, the shackle was destroyed and the axel of the lorry came away from the chassis. The shackle flew more than 50m through the air over the heads the demolition crew who were watching the debacle. This shackle weighed around 15kgs and the result of it striking an individual under those circumstances would have been fatal. I observed this process through binoculars from approximately 400m away and attempted to stop it through radio communication. The radio was never answered and the process continued to destruction. The inquiry I conducted later revealed the above facts. The shackle was recovered and it had been pulled straight. Photographs are available.

• On the dock gate relocation project, on the day it was successfully moved there were multiple cases (in one afternoon), of wire ropes parting under shock dynamic loads applied to them by heavy plant. This occurred when Peter Stephenson arrived on site and ‘took over’ the operation and decided to speed up a perfectly controlled process by issuing reckless instructions to the site supervisors that resulted in excessive force being applied to the dock gate and then further excessive force having to be applied to stop it once its 5,000 tonne mass had built up too much momentum. The wires snapped like guitar strings, again no fatalities by pure luck.
• The company instructed men to use ‘cherry pickers’ – Mobile Mechanical Access Platforms for working at height that had no certification and consequently no insurance.

• The general attitude was simply ‘get the job done’. If anyone complained they were fired.

• In short Able UK Ltd was, in my opinion, a law unto itself behind the gates of Graythorp.

The company may have altered its attitude to HS&E issues since I worked for it, I speak only of my own experience from 5 years ago. However, I would like to remind you that an employee of Stephenson Demolition, a sister company of Able UK, had his leg blown off at the knee, in a serious industrial accident at the companies Head Office site in Billingham on 12th February 2004.

This accident happened in the process of scrapping a JCB!

The fact that it occurred in the middle of the ghost ship furore was an unfortunate and embarrassing incident at a very sensitive and inconvenient time for the company, when you would expect it to be operating in an exemplary manner.

I had previously warned, both verbally and in writing, a Senior HSE Inspector, that this type of incident was of a ‘very high probability of occurrence’ within the Able Group at two meetings that occurred only four months before this accident, I still believe that further events of this nature are waiting to happen as long as this company operates in demolition activities. This incident occurred with only a few workers on site when the company was under international media attention. What are the possibilities of a repetition or worse with 30, 40 or 50 men on site, thousands of tonnes of ship steel on the move and dozens of pressure containing chambers to be identified and made safe prior to any hot work occurring.

4 Ship Building Myth

Able UK has existed for 30 years and according to its creator, owner, Chief Executive and Managing Director, Peter Stephenson it is a ‘world leader’ in the decommissioning of offshore structures. It possesses, we have been told, ‘world class facilities’ at its TERRC site and lists among its clients NAM, Shell, Phillips etc. Very impressive?

It is also ‘desperate’ to move into the ‘big time’ and is trying to get permission to allow it to decommission the four American warships in its tidal basin at Graythorp. The reason for this ‘desperation’ - The steel from these ships is worth about £1 Million per ship. Additionally Able will receive a massive cash handout from the tax payer to reinstate its property – nice work if you can get it!

Accordingly Able UK has many motives to get this venture moving, regardless of the long term implications for the town. It is worth noting that Mr Stephenson lives in North Yorkshire, 30 miles from where the waste from these ships will be handled. So there will be no long term implications for him or his family.

As such, I do not think it will be long before we will soon be reading more banner headlines such as those in the Evening Gazette 18th Jan 2005. “RETURN OF THE SHIPYARD” 700 Jobs for Hartlepool firm etc. If Planners say yes!

The hype makes it clear, hundred of jobs and a bright new future. A happy return to the good old days of well paid ship building jobs in the North East of England, maybe some work recycling too! The inference is clear. Give us permission to do this work as there are hundreds of unemployed workers out there and they need jobs. If only it was true. It is not; it is pure fantasy of the worst kind; it is a cynical manipulation of the public.

Can Able UK provide any evidence whatsoever that it is even being considered as a candidate to enter a bid to undertake any shipbuilding work? That is only stage 1 of a complicated award procedure. I would propose that Able UK Ltd is not even at this rudimentary level and as such cannot provide any such evidence!

There will be no return to ship building in North East England. Anyone with an ounce of understanding of world economics realises that UK based companies cannot compete with developing nations prepared to do the work for a small margin of profit, while paying its workers $5 day.

If call centre jobs are going to India how on earth can we compete in ship building?

Big promises are easy to make. How many times in the last 10 years have we seen banner headlines in the Hartlepool Mail and Evening Gazette - Able UK promising 300 jobs, 400 jobs, 700 jobs 1000 jobs etc…etc. Then nothing comes of it.

However, if the ‘spin’ of the message can be used as a hammer to get the company the permission and grant money it needs to get the scrapping work underway then it will have worked. Its purpose served the hundreds of jobs promised will never manifest them-selves in reality, mark my words!

Someone or something, a ‘technicality’, an ‘unreasonable client’, or ‘act of God’ will be blamed, it will not of course, under any circumstances be Able UK’s fault, but these jobs, that are currently ‘absolutely in the bag’ if we are to believe the company and it spokesmen, will somehow, ‘against all odds’, melt away!

5 Wind Turbine Construction Myth

Able UK has made several statements alluding to its future involvement in wind turbine manufacture. To do so it must first win a contract to do the work, but this technicality posses a fairly sizable problem for Able. If you intend to sell a product you must have someone who wants to buy it from you when it’s finished or commissions you to make it to begin with.

Any client company requesting construction work of this nature from a contractor goes through a very thorough process of selection of all the companies who bid to undertake the work. Two of the key attributes it considers are the track record of the companies bidding, and the calibre of the staff they employ. As Able UK has no track record in the manufacture of anything of this nature, let alone a complicated structure like a wind turbine, I would propose that the company would simply fall at the first hurdle! As per its ship building credentials, it would not be considered as a serious, credible contender. It’s that simple!

Able may be entertaining another company interested in bidding for turbine fabrication contracts using leased land at Graythorp but if they had such work they would not wait around for Graythorp to be finished, there are plenty of other places available for a serious contractor to set up an enterprise of this nature if they so desired. So the idea of a company just waiting in the wings for a particular piece of real estate to open seems an economically flawed idea. Why would anyone wait for Graythorp when the contracts are out for bid now? If it is a company who already has the work and would like to relocate to Graythorp then that’s different, but that is jobs moving location not being created.

Able UK’s pretensions in the media for economic revival for the area based on ship building, ship repair and wind turbine manufacture can be easily discounted on the grounds of world economics and its total lack of experience in the field of the construction & fabrication.

It is a fantasy, but it provides an excellent stalking horse for the company’s real interest - ship decommissioning.

6 Ship Decommissioning Facts

Ship Decommissioning is a very lucrative business and that is the essence of the companies thrust for cash grants and the permissions it needs to reinstate Graythorp.

The really big Public Relations problem and therefore ‘Grant Approval’ problem with ship decommissioning, bigger than the pollution problem, is that it does not need to employ very many people to be successful! That is a fact Able UK does not want people to know about, because if they did the grants would never be approved!

How do you justify, up front, the spending of millions of pounds of taxpayer’s money on a privately owned facility when you are only going to employ a handful of workers?

As someone who has decommissioned structures and ships in the real world, I can tell you that you simply do not need hundreds of workers to do it, once you employ more than 25 to 30 men per vessel, you start to run into problems, more workers become a liability. You are scrapping ships not building them. The steel comes down in large sections, very quickly, it is an aggressive process. Big sections are turned into little one’s, the little ones are shipped to the steel mill. You do not need a big workforce to do that.

As a rough calculation – The four ships in Graythorp basin equate to approximately 45,000 tonnes of steel. That represents less than four months work for 50 men, 6 months if you use 30 men or about 11 weeks for 70 men, but certainly there is not more than 45,000 man hours of decommissioning work in the ships.

There are breaking yards in the United States of America currently decommissioning ships for the US government, of similar sized contracts to Able UK’s (4 ships or more) using workforces of between 20 to 30 employees, some even less.

The permissions Able UK has applied for to undertake its various ventures are being sold to us as good for the area and are based two on concepts:-

1. Hundreds of jobs for Hartlepool / Teesside.
2. Wealth cascading back into the local economy from the venture itself.

The jobs myth is the ‘sugar coating’ on a fairly bitter pill, it’s the ‘spin’ in the story. Hundreds of jobs can only happen if full scale ship construction takes place. For reasons stated I do not think that activity will ever happen. However, if the permissions are granted and the monies approved they open the door to ship scrapping but for a lot less benefit to Hartlepool.

The four months or so of scrapping work already stated equate to a wage bill for the total work of around £350,000. A sum not to be sniffed at but on the macro scale of town and area economics it is a drop in the ocean. So the balance between the need for employment and the need to look after the place we live in must be addressed. Like all things there is a trade off.

The jobs that Able is yet again promising need to be weighed against the environmental impact of the activity. Ship scrapping is a dirty business, much more so than building ships, so the environmental impact will be greater. However the economic reward for the town is tiny compared to the reward actual ship building would have. While it may be acceptable to pollute the town for 700 highly skilled, highly paid long term construction jobs, does the same apply if it’s only 30 or so semi skilled, low paid, temporary jobs. The pollution is the same or worse; the reward to Hartlepool is poor by comparison.

7 Cash Flow Back Into The Local Economy Myth

While it is true that Able UK will require a new dry dock gate if it is to reinstate the facility at Graythorp, a requirement that will generate a good deal of work somewhere, it is doubtful in the extreme that this structure will be designed and built on Teesside or even the UK. Design houses and fabrication yards on the continent offer a more cost effective method of manufacture. Once built, you simply tow it around the Bay of Biscay, up the English Channel and install it without any input from the local population or benefit to the local economy.

This proposition was researched in 1999 when Able UK applied for, and I believe, received a grant of £5 million from One North East to reinstate the Dry Dock at Graythorp. The company received the money but did not spend it as the grant did not cover the full cost of the work and the company had no projects to offset the expenditure against. As I understand it the money had to be returned.

So if this one element of the contract that could be done on Teesside is not done on Teesside, what does that mean for the supposed millions of pounds that has been promised will flood back into circulation in the local economy as a consequence of this enterprise?

It is difficult to see how this mechanism will work in this situation.

Ship building is not viable in the North East of England in today’s world economy, so there is not going to be a requirement for a workforce of hundreds of men necessary to pump even minimum amounts of money back into the local economy via wages, those scrapping jobs that will be created will be few & will be fairly low paid.

In light of these facts what are the macro economic benefits to the local economy of it allowing ship decommissioning to occur in its vicinity? What are the paybacks?

This benefit must be judged by the size of the cash flow circulating into the local economy!

In the case of ship decommissioning you must first realise that the most important financial advantage for a company undertaking this kind of work is that it has virtually no outgoing expenses on a routine basis. Money for old rope and you do not even have to buy the rope!

Under those circumstances there is very little cash flow back into the local economy. There will not be hundred of suppliers benefiting from this activity; there will not even be dozens. The number could be into single figures or the teens and of those some could very well be outside the UK.

Please remember that Able UK is not going to manufacture anything, as such it will only purchase minimal consumables such a fuel for vehicles, gas for burning, transportation of hardware & equipment and wages, these costs are insignificant, No stock to buy!

Where is the mechanism to cascade this money back into the local economy? It does not exist!

Fifty jobs for four months will not alter the local economy in any meaningful way. Even if every worker was employed from Hartlepool it is still insignificant, and I think it unlikely that the entire workforce will be Hartlepool people.

The claim of hundreds of jobs for the town is an old stalking horse tactic of Able UK, it has used it every time it has applied for government grants.

Is the risk of letting this company loose to work on a hazardous/dangerous enterprise, if not controlled properly, with the track recorded I have stated really worth the tiny benefits to the town of a handful of jobs. The dangers come not only from pollutants inherent in the vessels but from the hazards of working in an industry notorious for accidents in the first instance, and those hazards being compounded by a company whose attitude to HSE issues is the worst I have ever encountered.

A company that buried bad news in general, about accidents in particular, lied to officials, kept secrets, exploited the unemployed and has had one of its workers seriously injured in the last year! Is it worth it?

8 Able UK Expertise

I think under the circumstances of the propaganda Able UK has put out into the public domain in the last eighteen months it is worth taking a look at this ‘World Leading’ company and its role in the onshore decommissioning of offshore structures:-

Able UK Ltd has, I believe, only decommissioned one ship in its history. A 500 Tonne vessel. 1/20th the size of the ones it now proposes to scrap.

Able UK Ltd has scrapped several offshore units for Companies such as NAM, Total etc…However those units were, aside from a few small Jackets, for the most part rig Modules, self contained units, like building blocks, not full oil rigs, just little bits of them, like Lego blocks. The modules were brought to Hartlepool by heavy lift companies and barge contractors such as Heerema, who then deposited the modules onto a quayside.

The modules are not large, around 1,000 tonnes each, and can easily be cut down to small pieces of scrap using 4 to 6 men in 3 to 4 weeks maximum. A scrap burner in this industry is expected to process around 10 tonnes of material a day.

The job is hazardous, dirty, semi-skilled and low paid, and does not require anything other than a small workforce to undertake it. Chopping up Modules is also less complex that ship decommissioning.

My understanding from information on their web site is that Able UK has processed around 50,000 tonnes of steel in this manner in 20 years, This is not a great deal of material over that period and hardly ranks as a world leader, there are car scrap yards that do more tonnage in a month.

Anyone can claim to be world class, and Able UK proclaim it from the mountain top to anyone who will listen, but the facts just don’t add up. The published history and credentials of Able UK is very questionable.

Additionally where is the expertise of this company. Mr Stephenson is not an Engineer neither is he technically trained in structural engineering. At the time I worked for the company none of the other Engineering professional had worked for the company for more than a few months, and were themselves, like me, only the latest incumbents in their roles, as staff turnover among professionals working for the company was breathtakingly high, I am aware of 5 other professionals who resigned in disgust from the company after only 3 to 5 months service in the brief period of time I was employed there. This is a huge number in a staff of only 20 or so people working at Able House the company HO. All those employed at senior levels at the company when I was there have since departed. The only constant is Peter Stephenson.

My own entry into Able UK came about as my predecessor had ‘suddenly’ quit the company mid-Project leaving a need for a front man to close the NAM K11 Project as already stated.

As no one in the UK has decommissioned ships on any scale I would ask who will be the professionals who will do this job. Managers, Engineers, Supervision, were is the expertise?
Is Able UK a World leading company? I would say no. A measurement of the suitability of this company to undertake this work is demonstrated in the time it has taken the company to align itself with basic government regulations to have the necessary permissions to undertake the work it has set itself up to do. 500 days after the first ghost ship arrived in the town boarders the company still does not have permission to undertake the work it has touted for.

How did it ever persuade the American government that it was authorised or capable of undertaking this work in the first instance, within the original time table for completion of the contract, with a dry dock. The original deadline for completion of the work expired quite some time ago! The contract that MARAD issued stipulated that the work had to be done in a dry dock. How did Able manage to demonstrate it actually had a functioning dry dock or persuade people it could get one in the time available?

Graythorp itself is a facility in virtually the same state that Laing’s left it in the 1980’s except that there is no longer an actual dry dock. The gates that are there are structurally compromised and broken beyond repair and will never be reused. The quay wall on the east side has subsided under its own weight and required piling in 1999. Not by any stretch of a normal person’s imagination could you describe TERRC as a world class facility. So what could possibly have given the American government the impression that this company was capable of fulfilling the contract it bid for?

Able UK’s web site is an interesting read and is a reflection of the spin Able UK puts out about itself. On first view it looks like the work of a fantastic company, but if you question some of the claims made there, a lot of them just turn out to be fantasy, but if you don’t know the history it would be difficult to distinguish that fantasy from the reality.

The web site is very cleverly constructed and very convincing, if you don’t know the truth that is. Is this what the Americans saw and swallowed?

9 Misrepresentation

There are claims in the company profile on its web site that ‘appear’ at first view, to associate Able UK with large scale construction for the oil and gas industry and I believe this misrepresents it as something it is not. Able UK’s association starts and finishes as a place to deposit structures that are no longer needed. However, Photographs of Jacket construction that were clearly done by Laings 20 years ago, adorn the web page, and although Able does not actually claim to have done the work in the pictures, it alludes to it by association, by making statements under photographs of these structures such as “Ravenspurn Gravity Base Structure completed in ‘TERRC’ Dry Dock ready for sail out” & “Thistle Steel oil platform jacket under construction in TERRC Dry Dock”.

Able UK did not own Graythorp basin until 1996, after the gates had been destroyed by an exceptionally high spring tide that tore them from their housings and TERRC did not exist as an entity when those pictures were taken. So why marry up TERRC & Jacket construction. If it was an attempt to show the potential of the basin as a large fabrication site then this could be achieved by simply stating the truth. I believe that this type of dissembling is a bid to distort the truth and a deliberate attempt to misrepresent the company as something more than it is, a lot more. It is the same principal as the application for grant monies and planning permission based on ship building. Tell the World you are going to employ hundreds of workers, get the money and the permissions you need and you are clear to decommission ships, then stonewall any questions when the ship building jobs glut does not happen!

Able UK is absolutely aware that if the truth was known (about what type of work it intends to pursue and how many people it would actually employ if its facilities were reinstated at taxpayers expense) - it would never get its grant applications approved in the first place. That those applications would be thrown out as not possessing sufficient merit to justify public money being spent on them!

This kind of ‘routine’ misrepresentation was a persistent feature of the company in my time there. Able UK was in my opinion a pseudo company. It had all the outward appearance of a regular company but there was no substance to back it up.

The only structure pinning the whole thing together was Peter Stephenson. This man is an outstanding advocate of Able UK and the things he claims it has done, but I felt that his ‘enthusiasm’ removed his objectivity and focus on the reality of his company’s true position in the world and its limited level of expertise and ability. Claims to owning world class facilities and statements such as “ABLE is the acknowledged industry leader” in respect to decommissioning of offshore structures are very easy to make.

These claims have not been verified by any independent authority, where are the testimonials? If they exist I am sure they would feature significantly on the web site. These claims bear no reality to historical facts or the condition of the facilities at Graythorp, and arguably demonstrate a company with a lot to gain, complete with an elastic sense of proportion. Self praise is no recommendation!

Graythorp is in poor condition & is, in fact, a tidal basin now, and not as claimed in various press conferences and in Able’s web site to be the ‘largest dry dock in Europe’. It requires £ millions spending on it to make it in to a working facility never mind world class.

These facts however, are not allowed to stand in the way of a good story, and interestingly the company claims on its web site that “all ship recycling activities are undertaken in dry conditions (unlike the majority of ship breaking yards) the use of the large dry dock maximises benefit to the environment”. What is that about? This statement is written in the present tense and misrepresents the company as a bona fide ship breaker with a dry dock and a history of ship breaking. The only ship the company did break was not done in Graythorp ‘dry dock’. Able UK is world class at something and that is stretching the truth.

In a further example of world class dissembling, The company had no problems about claiming to have converted 2 ships in its TERRC facility. The MSV Norlift & MSV Apache, both vessels were actually completed by Northern Ocean Services at Tees Offshore Base in the early 90’s before Able UK ever owned Graythorp. I know because I worked on them! Able UK also claimed ownership of a 10,000 tonne gantry crane, taller than Big Ben, with a price tag of £10million and even published photographs in company brochures superimposing this structure on a rebuilt Graythorp site, complete with a fully functioning dry dock!!!

Why would a company make claims like these? (Able UK’s only connection to the ships concerned was that my predecessor at Able, had managed the conversions of the Norlift and Apache for NOS at TOB in 1993/4. My only guess is that by employing this man, the ‘association’ was deemed sufficiently close that it was ‘truthful’ to warrant a claim that the work was done by Able in TERRC). The only reasons I can think of is that these claims do make Able’s ‘image’ look a bit more impressive to clients than that of just a scrapping company. As for the 10,000 tonne crane, the skyline at Graythorp is unchanged.

10 Facts

• FACT – Able UK Ltd claims to be about to resurrect ship building in the North East of England, and it claims it will employ hundred of workers to undertake this task.

• FACT – Able UK Ltd claims that it will begin wind turbine manufacture at Graythorp employing more workers

• FACT - The company has no track record in these fields of expertise, and as such would be laughed out of the bid process on day 1.

• FACT – Graythorp is derelict and needs millions of pounds spending on it to make it a working, viable facility.

• FACT - Able UK Ltd does not have the financial gravitas to fund this work itself and needs £millions of tax payers money to accomplish this task.

Think about this:-

• FACT – Able UK Ltd is a private family owned company aggressively chasing ship decommissioning contacts in the USA and UK.

• FACT - Ship Decommissioning does not require a large workforce and is extremely profitable.

What about facts on the other side of the argument. They are simple:-

• World economics tells us that there will be no return to shipbuilding in the UK.

• Even if there was ship building contracts were would the workers come from? The last experienced ship builders are coming up to their retirements or have already retired. Where would the expertise come from?

• Construction contracts such as these have penalty clauses know as ‘liquidated damage’ clauses in them. These clauses include penalties for late delivery. Is it possible for a company engaging in a new venture, something it has no experience of, winning the contract to start with and then being able to recruit a workforce skilled enough to take on the work and deliver it on time? The last time anything like that was attempted in the UK was 20 years ago at Nissan with a multi £ million investment in training and hardware by an international company, backed by the Japanese government. It still took them years to get to a level where it was employing 700 people and to make a return on their investment. Is Able in that league? I don’t think so - Its just not credible!

That leaves one option open to Able UK once it gets its permissions the one it really wants - ship decommissioning! There are further facts here:-

• The economy of scale of ship decommissioning dictates that the company will not employ hundreds of workers in this task. So not much benefit for the local economy.

• As there is virtually nothing to buy there is no method to pump the millions of pounds Stirling back into the local economy that the supporters of this venture claim. There is no end product. Ship scraping is a closed loop. Again not much benefit for the town.

• There are currently fully functional, under utilised dry docks in the UK crying out for work, all of which could take the ships in Graythorp basin. Why should the government spend tax payer’s money financing a private company to build another dry dock when there is not enough work for the ones the UK already have and unlike Graythorp are fit for use right now.

11 Conclusion

If the conclusions in this document are correct and Able UK is given the permissions it needs to proceed anyway, it will, I believe, leave Hartlepool with a few intermittent, low paid contract jobs, very limited financial reward and a long term legacy of pollutants coming our way if the work is not handled properly. My experience of Able UK Ltd is that it will not be handled properly, and that Able will cut corners and people will be hurt, because that is how Able UK works. After 30 years of existence the Able leopard cannot change its spots.

What is more it leaves us, the British tax payer with an enormous bill to foot and that is a scandal.

In every survey to date the majority of the people in the town have indicated significantly that they do not want this work done in the town by this company, they have seen through the hype, they know its going to cost a fortune and there will be few benefits and few jobs, and I suspect the minority that do support the work, those who see only potential jobs, are unaware of the implications of Able undertaking the work and the hollowness of the promises of ‘jobs for all’.

Bryn David Mulcahy.
B.Eng, C.Eng, MIEE, Eur Ing.