Scientist: Oil-eating bacteria feasted

OCEAN SPRINGS, Miss. - Oil-eating bacteria in the Gulf of Mexico devoured crude oil from the Deepwater Horizon wellhead last year, researcher Terry Hazen said during the University of Southern Mississippi’s distinguished lecture series Wednesday. Hazen, co-director of the Virtual Institute for Microbial Stress and Survival at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and a team of 50 scientists studied the spill from May 25 to Oct. 20, 2010 and found that that 45 percent of the light crude evaporated in a week, then bacteria acted like "oil-seeking missiles" and feasted on the oil. The bacteria had adapted to eating oil over millions of years from seeps in the Gulf of Mexico. "This does not give the oil companies a free pass," Hazen said. "Do not think that. It was devastating. There was a lot of oil out there for 84 days. Plankton and fish, all sorts of things, were swimming through that stuff. It is going to take long-term studies to figure out exactly how that affected them." (Source: Mississippi Press, 07/28/11)

Contract: General Dynamics, $10M

General Dynamics - Bath Iron Works, Bath, Maine, is being awarded a $10,000,000 cost-plus-award-fee modification to existing previously awarded basic ordering agreement to provide engineering and management services for advance planning and design in support of the post shakedown availability for USS Independence (LCS 2). Work will be performed in Bath, Maine (72 percent); Pittsfield, Mass (20 percent); and Mobile, Ala. (8 percent). Work is expected to be completed by February 2013. The Supervisor of Shipbuilding, Conversion, and Repair, Bath, Maine, is the contracting activity. (Source: DoD, 07/22/11)

BAE bringing shipbuilding back to yard

MOBILE, Ala. - New ship construction will be returning to the site of the former Alabama Dry Dock and Shipbuilding Co., officials with BAE Systems Southeast Shipyards said Friday. The company said it will partner with Netherlands-based IHC Merwede to build offshore oil vessels at BAE's yards in Jacksonville, Fla., and Mobile. BAE has about 800 workers at its Mobile yard now, but could grow by 400 in the coming years because of the agreement. ADDSCO, on Pinto Island, opened in 1916 and closed in 1988. It was bought by Atlantic Marine in 1992, and sold to BAE last year. (Source: Mobile Press-Register, 07/15/11)

LCS to be named Little Rock

Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus announced today that the next Freedom-class littoral combat ship will be named the USS Little Rock (LCS 9). Little Rock is the second ship to bear the name of the capital city in Arkansas. The first, a Cleveland-class light cruiser that served after World War II, was converted to a Galveston-class guided missile cruiser and is now a museum in Buffalo, N.Y. The new monohull Little Rock will be 378 feet long and built in Marinette, Wis., by a Lockheed Martin team. The other class of LCS, the Independence class, is an aluminum trimaran built in Mobile, Ala., by Austal USA. (Source: DoD, 07/15/11)

Contract: Huntington Ingalls, $98.6M

Huntington Ingalls Inc., Pascagoula, Miss., is being awarded a $98,614,104 cost-plus-fixed-fee not-to-exceed modification to previously awarded contract for advance procurement of long-lead-time materials in support of LPD 27, the 11th ship of the LPD class. Work will be done in Pascagoula and is expected to be completed by January 2012. The Naval Sea Systems Command, Washington, D.C., is the contracting activity. (Source: DoD, 07/13/11)

Shipyard savings claim questioned

Northrop Grumman says it will save the government some $600 million by divesting its shipbuilding operation and closing the Avondale, La., shipyard. But the Pentagon's audit agency concluded it can't verify the claim. More than 90 percent of the claimed shutdown costs were unsupported because the contractor could not provide evidence of its underlying assumptions, the Navy said. (Source: Bloomberg, 07/12/11)

Oversight of vessels, modules combined

MOBILE, Ala. - The Navy put a rear admiral in charge of a new office overseeing the entire littoral combat ship program, a change from the previous division between building the vessels and the mission modules. The vessel program is ahead of the modules, packages of weapons and equipment designed for hunting mines, fighting submarines and attacking surface enemies. Navy officials said the decision to merge oversight of the programs had nothing to do with their respective performances, but simply to put both programs under the same leadership. (Source: Mobile Press-Register, 07/11/11)

Mobile ship makes movie debut

The Austal USA-built USS Independence is one of the characters in the movie “Cars 2.” Officials from Austal and the Navy, which owns the Independence, said they didn't approach Pixar or Disney about using the ship, "but to have one of the most creative movie studios in Hollywood feature a Mobile-built product confirms what we locals have known for years, our ship is awesome," said Joe Rella, president of Austal USA. In the movie, the unnamed ship character is seen guarding the villain's offshore oil platform lair and then chasing after one of the movie's heroes, spy car Finn McMissile. The ship pops up again at the end of the movie. Austal is building its second littoral combat ship as a subcontractor for General Dynamics, then will be the prime contractor for 10 more. (Source: Mobile Press-Register, 07/05/11)

Stratton finishes builder's sea trials

PASCAGOULA, Miss. - Ingalls Shipbuilding's third Legend-class national security cutter, Stratton (WMSL 752), successfully completed builder's sea trials in the Gulf of Mexico this week, the company announced. The 418-foot cutter spent three days at sea, while Ingalls' test and trials team conducted extensive testing of the propulsion, electrical, damage control, anchor handling, small boat and combat systems. (Source: Mississippi Press, 07/01/11)