Norway postpones asking for compensation from Navantia for possible "critical failures" in its frigates

Norway postpones asking for compensation from Navantia for possible "critical failures" in its frigates

The Oslo Government admits that it does not have "clarity at the moment" about the responsibility of the shipyard in the sinking of one of the ships that sold them

  Second shock for the Navantia public shipyards in just three months, and this time without there being a political controversy -as in the corvette contract for Saudi Arabia- but, a priori, alleged manufacturing failures of the company itself. At least that is the complaint that comes from Norway following the collapse of the frigate KNM Helge Ingstad after colliding with an oil tanker on the 8th, because according to the preliminary report of the investigators a "critical failure" in the design of the military ship.

  The problem detected by the Norwegian Transport Accident Investigation Commission (SHT) lies in the sealing of the ship, given that, in the opinion of its experts, there would be deficiencies in the impermeability of its compartments. This would mean, according to his first opinion of the incident three weeks ago, that opening a waterway could end up flooding the entire ship, causing its collapse.

  In the specific case of the frigate, according to an annex to the report, the collision with the tanker broke a part of the hull and the water flooded practically three compartments: the quarter of aft generators, the crew cabins on the deck and the warehouses. Despite this, the crew thought of a principle that could stay afloat, but upon realizing that the flood began to spread to the gear room through the hollow of the propellers was finally evacuated.

The incident, which caused eight minor injuries among the 136 crew members of the ship, occurred on the west coast of Norway, north of the city of Bergen, when it returned to its base after a maneuver with NATO. Despite the critical preliminary report with Navantia, the heads of the Norwegian Navy have considered it "premature" to draw conclusions for now. Of course, it has been ordered to investigate whether the alleged "failure" could also affect the other four frigates of the Nansen class (F-310) delivered to that country by the Spanish company. The five are part of an order made in 2000, to the old Bazán shipyards, for more than 1,050 million euros.

However, the Norwegian Prime Minister, Erna Solberg, has tried this Friday to calm a bit the spirits by postponing a possible economic claim to Navantia and, by extension, to Spain to be a public company of the SEPI group. "We do not have clarity about these things right now," the Nordic leader confessed. "We have to analyze it legally and leave it open if the request for compensation can be an issue in the future," he explained. In any case, the priority for her is to deepen the already open research: "The first thing is to find out in which part of the process the failures that have been detected occurred".

Navantia rules out problems
Sources of the shipyards maintain that «the design complies with all the certifications and satisfies the sealing conditions applicable to military ships». They have offered to collaborate in the refloating of the frigate, although they have not received a response, and point to the impact of the oil tanker as the main cause of the rapid flooding, ruling out in any case that there may be a common problem in the ships manufactured for Norway. The vice president of the Government, Carmen Calvo, considered this response "quite reasonable" on Friday, while highlighting the importance of Navantia "in the world."

This controversy comes just a month after the Government settled the possible cancellation of Navantia's contract to manufacture five corvettes to Saudi Arabia confirming that, despite the suggestions made by some of its ministers, the arms sale agreements with that country were maintained. . Of them, along with the development of the strategic plan of the company for the period 2018-2022 which foresees to shoot its order book up to 11,000 million euros, depends largely on its economic future after closing 2017 with its biggest losses of the last decade 389 million.

The company and unions have been negotiating for weeks a new single collective agreement, which will be the first to be applied both to shipyards of civil origin and those of military origin. In addition to a higher replacement rate so as not to lose employment and rejuvenate the workforce, unions are demanding a salary increase that, including arrears since 2016, could lead to a 3% salary improvement.

Green light to the controversial submarines S-80 for the Navy for twice the cost
The Council of Ministers has finally authorized on Friday the execution by Navantia of the construction of four submarines of the S-80 class for the Navy, a project marked by controversy after detecting a series of deficiencies, the main one being overweight that made its navigation practically unviable according to the original design, forcing it to lengthen its length by almost ten meters. Finally, after several years searching for possible technical alternatives that "returned the viability" to this military program - the initial order dates from March 2004 - now the necessary modifications have been given the green light but with a high extra cost.

Specifically, the changes introduced to make the S-80s viable raise the budget of the project to around 1,772 million euros, which almost doubles the bill forecast by the Ministry of Defense to 3,905 million (83% more). The submarines will be built in the shipyard that the public company has in Cartagena (Murcia), with deliveries of the four units scheduled between September 2022 and July 2027. To introduce the changes referred to the Government wields "reasons of public interest" as "The defense of the country to achieve strategic independence", as well as "economic and social" reasons to reinforce investments and employment in the area close to the Navantia facilities.