ABSTRACT
The 1970s and 1980s saw an expansion in offshore oil activities requiring the specialised carriage of oil rigs and production platforms. Sea carriage of heavy and voluminous cargoes had initially been undertaken through towage of the item itself, ‘wet towage’, which developed into ‘dry towage’ in the 1960s with the use of large purpose-built barges designed for sea towage. The need for towage was eliminated with the development of self-propelled heavylift vessels in the late 1970s. In 1985 BIMCO produced a standard form of charter for such carriage, HEAVYCON, the Standard Transportation Contract for Heavy and Voluminous Cargoes. In November 2007 it was updated and thoroughly revised. It is a standard form of voyage charter primarily for use by ‘semi-submersible vessels serving the super heavylift market where cargoes are almost exclusively carried on deck and are, in most cases, sole cargoes’. 1 The form addresses the carriage needs not only of the oil and gas industry, but also of port expansion projects, power plant construction and wind farm construction.
