Seacurus Bulletin 11/07/2014
MARITIME LABOUR CONVENTION AND SEAFARER NEWS
Sea Sunday
Hundreds of Church congregations in the United Kingdom, will highlight the tragic plight of abandoned seafarers suffering in maritime ports all over the world this ‘Sea Sunday.’ In the UK alone, the Christian organisation Mission to Seafarers’ has witnessed some extraordinary cases of abandoned vessels in the last year, which caused untold misery and distress, with ships’ crews being left penniless in port, and lacking water, fuel and basic food supplies.’s activity
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Helping Thousands
During 2013 SeafarerHelp, a hotline for seafarers, dealt with problems involving over 6,400 seafarers and their families. There was a 35 percent increase in the number of new cases handled by the SeafarerHelp team, and an increase of 47 percent in the number of seafarers assisted compared to the previous year. The most common problems seafarers faced were unpaid wages, problems with repatriation, contractual problems, sub-standard conditions on board.
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Getting Rid
Maersk Tankers, a unit of A.P. Moller-Maersk, has quit four unprofitable crude oil charter contracts by buying out supertankers and selling them onwards, continuing its exit from crude oil transportation. The company now has charters for just two supertankers, called Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCCs), although the intention is to get out of these contracts too, Maersk Tankers spokeswoman Stine Pedersen said. Maersk Tankers sold 15 VLCCs in January.
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Boxing Clever
The formation of the 2M agreement between MSC and Maersk answers some of the speculation since the collapse of the P3 alliance last month, but a fresh batch of questions have been created by the recent announcement. "The 2M development doesn’t come as a complete surprise and on the whole it looks like a strategically less aggressive alternative to the P3." Jonathan Roach, container market analyst at Braemar Seascope has reported.
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Lost Overboard
No fewer than 1,679 containers are lost at sea annually, according to an update to its survey and estimate of containers lost at sea released by the World Shipping Council (WSC). For the combined six-year period from 2008 to 2013, WSC estimated that there were 546 containers lost on average each year, not counting catastrophic events. The industry has been actively supporting a number of efforts to enhance container safety.
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PIRACY AND MARITIME SECURITY NEWS
Roads Work
Building roads and harbours in Somalia is a better way of tackling piracy than deploying warships, a new study says. The report believes that inward investment is the best way to drive the growth of alternative industries, steering the nation away from a dependence on criminality to raise living standards. At the moment piracy is still one of the main ways in which young people can look to raise their living standards, alternatives are drastically needed.
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Asian Boom
Dryad Maritime has issued a warning of an increasing threat from Southeast Asia piracy following the release of their second quarter figures. Dryad’s COO Ian Millen commented: “Our team of analysts have assessed that at least one gang is operating to the east of Singapore, hijacking small product tankers and stealing fuel cargoes. These criminals have knowledge in the workings of ships’ equipment and procedures for carrying out STS transfers."
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Guards Freed
About nine months after an US ship, dubbed ‘floating armory’, was detained off Tuticorin port in India, the Madras high court quashed the criminal case against its 35 crew members. Justice P N Prakash made it clear the crew could not be tried under the Arms Act: "I hold that the anchoring of MV Seaman Guard Ohio within our territorial sea was out of necessity and their action is saved by the principle of ‘innocent passage’."
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Failing State
The US-based Fund For Peace has issued its latest Top 20 of the Fragile State Index list. South Sudan has rocketed to the top of the list, but Somalia remains at Number 2. Somalia is in the global headlines for all the wrong reasons. If it’s not Somali pirates besmirching its reputation, the country is facing the menace of the militant Al-Shabaab group. Poverty affects in excess of 73% among a population of 9 million.
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Petro Pirates
Piracy attacks surge in SE Asia’s dreaded Malacca Straits – the IMB has called the rise of petro-piracy "alarming". The successful business model which is delivering vast profits for the pirates is now thought to have been copied by Indonesian pirates. IMB states that Petro-piracy is an organised crime, requiring good logistics and networks to steal and sell-on fuel, mainly in Batam or to black marketeers in Singapore where fuel is more expensive.
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Supporting Pirates
Why do some Somali clans protect pirates while others don’t, that is the question posed by a new study in Somali piracy. Co-author Federico Varese, Professor of Criminology from the University of Oxford, said: ‘A puzzle that has long been neglected in the study of the hijacking of foreign vessels off the coasts of Somalia is why only certain parts of the country’s coastline seem susceptible to harbouring pirates. Getting answers may help in finding solutions to piracy.
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ENDS
Daily news feed from Seacurus Ltd – providers of MLC crew insurance solutions www.seacurus.com
Best regards,
S Jones
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