Current News

PAY PROTEST: the TUC has expressed concern at new labour market data revealing that UK pay growth averaged only 2.0% over the past year. General secretary Frances O’Grady commented: ‘It’s good news that employment is rising, but more needs to be done to ensure these jobs are decent quality. Wage growth remains in the slow lane. Putting money back into people’s pockets is essential to securing a strong recovery, and avoiding the debt-fuelled spending boom that caused the last financial crisis.’

AUSTRALIAN BAN: an Indonesian-flagged general cargoship has been banned from Australian waters for the second time in a year. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) said it had taken the action against the 2,542gt Noah Satu for repeatedly failing to meet regulatory requirements — including breaches of the Maritime Labour Convention. ‘The performance of this vessel is completely unacceptable,’ said AMSA chief executive Mick Kinley.

CONVENTION CALL: the International Maritime Organisation has urged countries to ratify and implement a key compensation treaty covering the transport of hazardous cargoes at sea. Secretary-general Kaitack Lim said the need for agreement on the 2010 convention on liability and compensation for hazardous and noxious substances by sea is increasingly urgent as a consequence of the marked growth in such shipments.

OWNER FINED: the owner of a harbour tanker has been fined £3,000 and ordered to pay more than £7,000 costs after pleading guilty to operating a dangerously unsafe vessel. Southampton magistrates court heard that Joseph O’Connor had breached the Merchant Shipping Act by running the vessel Wadestone with defects including hull cracking, corrosion and lack of proper certification for the intended voyage.

LIVERPOOL LINK: the Dutch firm WEC Lines has launched a new weekly service between the Port of Liverpool and Portugal. The company says it is responding to growing demand for links to the north of england and the service will connect Liverpool with Lisbon, Setubal, Leixoes and Sines, with other calls in Ireland, Scotland, Morocco, Spain and the Canary Islands.

FERRY FIGURES: British ferry companies carried slightly fewer passengers last year, but recorded an increase in freight traffic. Figures released by Discover Ferries last month showed overall passenger figures for UK operators totalled 38.9m in 2015, down by 0.6% from the previous year. Vehicle volumes were up 1.3%, to a total of 8.61m.

HUMAN STUDY: human error and the breakdown of communications on the bridge are common causes of shipping accidents, a new study has found. Research published by the UK P&I Club and Solis Marine Consultants calls for closer liaison between bridge teams and pilots, and better preparations for transit to and from the berth.

PRICING PROBE: the European Commission is seeking views on proposals to control the pricing practices of container shipping companies. The Commission said it had cleared 15 major container lines of anti-competitive practices following a lengthy investigation, but it had tabled proposals to change the way in which they publish their freight rates.

FLAG APPEAL: French seafaring unions are calling for Brittany Ferries to transfer a chartered ship to the country’s main register. The company is using the 12,076gt Pelican on a service between Poole and Bilbao and unions say they are concerned about the conditions of the crew under the French second register, RIF.

DUAL WORK: Scottish transport minister Derek Mackay has welcomed the formal start of construction work on two new ‘dual fuel’ ferries for Caledonian Maritime Assets. The ships are being built on the Clyde and will come into service in 2018.

RIG FORECAST: almost 150 oil platforms in the UK sector of the North Sea will be scrapped over the next 10 years, according to a report from the analysts Douglas- Westwood. The company said life extension no longer makes economic sense for many fields and the low oil price will see many operators ceasing production— with 144 platforms likely to be removed between 2019 and 2026. Its research predicts that between US$70bn and $82bn will be spent on decommissioning activity in Denmark, Germany, Norway and the UK between 2016 and 2040.

TECHNIP TALKS: a significant reduction in the number of members facing redundancy from Technip (Singapore) has been achieved following ‘intensive’ talks last month. Redundancies have been cut from 38 to eight. As part of the agreement, officer ranks will see a 5.5% reduction on basic pay and changes to travel day arrangements with effect from 1 March 2016.

BOURBON BLOW: the French operator Bourbon Off shore said it had a total of 44 supply vessels in lay-up of the end of 2015 — representing 9% of its fleet. Announcing its annual results last month, company CEO Christian Lefèvre said it may put as much as 20% of its vessels into lay-up to reduce operating costs.

GULF CONTRACT: Technip has been secured a major contract from Deep Gulfenergy to support the development of three deepwater fields in the Gulf of Mexico. Off shore installation work is expected to be carried out later this year by Technip’s vessel Deep Blue.

FARSTAD WRITE-DOWN: Norwegian operator Farstad says it has written-down the value of its fleet by NOK1.09bn ($127m) because of poor market conditions. The company has cut its fleet to 59 vessels in response to low rates in the North Sea.

VDR SEARCH: accident investigators in the US have announced a second mission to search for the voyage data recorder of the ro-ro cargoship El Faro, which sank off the Bahamas in October last year with the loss of all 33 crew onboard. The National Transportation Safety Board will use a remotely operated vehicle to search a 35 sq m area for the ‘black box’ and other wreckage.

MALTESE BOOM: Malta’s ship register — the sixth largest in the world — grew by more than 14% last year, according to new figures released by the country’s maritime administration last month. Around 900 ships of 12m gt transferred to the flag during the year, meaning that it has grown by more than 45% in tonnage terms since 2011.

FEES ROW: more than 300 Nigerian navigation and engineering students studying at Romania’s Constanta Maritime University through Nigerian Maritime Administration & Safety Agency scholarships are facing expulsion after the Agency was accused of failure to pay their school fees and other allowances.

FARES WAR: a price war has broken out between the major ferry operators on services between the Italian mainland and Sardinia. Grimaldi has cut fares on its new service between Livorno (Leghorn) and Olbia by up to 40% in a bid to break Moby Line’s dominance of the route.

GREEK STRIKES: Greek seafaring unions have staged further strike action in protest at government plans to cut pensions, labour and insurance rights, and to increase the retirement age. The unions were also protesting at moves to privatise the port of Piraeus.

REPAIR CENTRE: Singapore has confirmed its place as the world’s leading ship repair location with 2015 port statistics showing that more than 6,330 ships contracted work ranging from equipment repair to technical overhauls needing dry docking.

WAGES WIN: French union reps have secured two months of unpaid wages owed to the crew of the Panama-flagged general cargoship Buse Trio, which was towed into the port of Brest after suffering a loss of power off the coast of Brittany last month.

TANKER DEATH: a Russian seafarer died and two other crew members were taken to hospital ashore in a serious condition after being overcome by fumes during tank cleaning onboard the 7,024dwt tanker Araz River last month.

CHANNEL RISE: cross-Channel freight figures last year reached 42.27mt, a 5% increase on 2014 and beating its previous record notched in 2013. Passenger loads rose 4% to 10.7m.

CRUISESHIP CALL: US politicians have called for a National Transportation Safety Board investigation into an incident in which the Bahamas flagged cruiseship Anthem of the Seas was caught up in a hurricane-force storm south of North Carolina last month. The vessel’s owners, Royal Caribbean, said the company storm avoidance policy was being strengthened after the ship suffered minor damage and some passengers were injured during 120mph winds and 30ft seas.

COSTA CASE: a Florida appeal court has ruled that Costa Concordia passengers cannot seek compensation in the US for any injuries suffered in the 2012 disaster off the coast of Italy. The judge ruled that the 57 claimants — including five US nationals — will have to take their case to Italy, arguing that litigating in Florida would result in ‘material and manifest injustice’ to parent company Carnival because the vast majority of evidence and virtually all of the witnesses are located in Italy.

CANADIAN GROUNDING: an investigation has been launched in Canada after a Panama-flagged containership ran aground in the St Lawrence river shortly after leaving Montreal. The 37,398gt MSC Monica was refloated on the high tide, and although initial reports suggested the ship had suffered steering failure, the federal transportation safety board said it had begun an investigation into the causes of the incident.

GOING HOME: Fifteen Ghanaian seafarers have returned home after being stranded on a flag of convenience bulk carrier in the French port of La Rochelle for six months. The crew of the Liberian-flagged Sider Pink received almost US$350,000 in owed wages after being supported by the International Transport Workers’ Federation, local unions and welfare agencies since the Greek-owned ship was detained last August.

CONDOR VICTORY: two years after staging a 12-day strike on the Condor Rapide in 2014, French seafarers have at last obtained the social security rights that they were fighting for. The French parliament has passed a law ensuring that all French-resident seafarers serving on flag of convenience ships can have the right to be part of the ENIM national insurance scheme, to which employers must contribute.

DRONE CHECKS: maritime authorities in Turkey are set to start using drones to monitor the Bosporus for maritime pollution. Istanbul’s marine directorate said it had imposed fines totalling around US$1m on 90 ships caught making illicit waste discharges in the waterway last year and the checks will be intensified when the use of drones starts in March.

ORDERS SLUMP: worldwide orders for new ships have almost halved over the past year, according to a new report. A total of 1,306 vessel orders were placed in 2015, down from 2,164 a year earlier. While the number of tanker orders increased 14% to 424, there was a 73% fall in off shore vessel orders and a 68% reduction in bulk carrier orders.

Maersk accused of scrapping U-turn

Campaigners have criticised Maersk Line after it revealed plans last month to use four scrapping facilities on India’s Alang coast to dismantle its redundant ships.

Announcing the decision, the company said it was committed to responsible recycling of its ships, but had selected the yards because ‘the current cost of sustainable ship recycling is not feasible’.

Maersk claimed there are only a limited number of yards around the world that offer sustainable shipbreaking, and it would cost the company as much as US$150m extra to handle the vessels it has earmarked for disposal over the next five years.

It said it had chosen four sites in Alang that met Hong Kong Convention standards for health, safety and environmental standards and would work with them to upgrade their facilities and practices.

But the campaign groups NGO Shipbreaking Platform and Transport and Environment (T&E) described Maersk’s decision as ‘hypocritical’ and motivated more by its bottom line than by corporate social responsibility.

‘We expected visionary leadership from Maersk and that their CSR report boasted support for the setting up of a truly modern ship recycling facility in India,’ said NGO Shipbreaking Platform executive director Patrizia Heidegger. ‘Instead they are rubber-stamping practices that they previously denounced.’

NGO Shipbreaking Platform said that 469 of the 768 large ocean-going ships sent for scrap last year went to South Asian beaches, where breaking yards fail to respect fundamental workers’ rights, ignore international waste trade law, and flout international environmental protection standards.

It said Greek owners made the most use of sub-standard facilities and even some companies claiming ‘green’ credentials, such as Hyundai, Evergreen, MOL and K-Line had sold vessels for breaking in Bangladesh.

Ballast water convention wait continues

The long wait for the introduction of the Ballast Water Management Convention will continue, the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) has announced.

Following weeks of checks on tonnage figures, the IMO says the convention has still failed to reach the threshold required to come into force. Although the treaty has now been ratified by 47 countries, their combined fleet totals 34.35% of global tonnage — just short of the 35% requirement. Had the 35% threshold been reached, the convention would have come into force on 24 November 2016.

IMO secretary-general Kitack Lim said: ‘The recent ratifications have brought the BWM Convention so very close to entry into force. While we cannot predict exactly when that will happen, I would urge countries that have not done so to ratify the BWM Convention as soon as possible so that we can establish a certain date for entry into force, and also so that it is widely accepted when it does.’

Mega-ship worries

Concerns have been raised over the challenges posed by ‘megaship’ accidents after the groundings last month of two ultra-large containerships.

Within the space of less than a fortnight, the 19,010TEU CSCL Indian Ocean ran aground following a steering failure in the river Elbe in Germany and the 13,900TEU APL Vanda had to carry out a controlled grounding on Bramble Bank in the Solent after suffering a loss of power while approaching the UK port of Southampton.

The incidents have highlighted growing concern over the difficulties facing salvage teams dealing with ultra-large vessels. Salvage master Captain Nick Sloane told a London Shipping Law Centre meeting last month that the industry has so far only dealt with relatively small containership groundings and wreck removals — and there are big questions about the costs and resources for handling big casualties.

The International Union of Marine Insurance (IUMI) said it was disturbed by the ‘accumulation of risk’ arising from the growth of containerships and their associated infrastructure. IUMI executive Patrizia Kern-Ferretti said this had been highlighted by the estimated US$5bn-plus costs of last year’s explosion in the Chinese port of Tianjin.

(With thanks to the Nautilus Telegraph:  www.nautilusint.org)