Top Ten Maritime News Stories 12/12/2016

Seacurus Daily: Top Ten Maritime News Stories 12/12/2016

1. HMM Agrees to 2M Alliance
Heavily indebted South Korean shipping company Hyundai Merchant Marine (HMM) said on Sunday it has agreed with the 2M shipping alliance to form a cooperative relationship that falls short of full-fledged membership. Joining an alliance with major shipping firms was one of the conditions of a debt restructuring deal between Hyundai Merchant Marine and its creditors in May, and the company said on Sunday that the tie-up with 2M met that criteria. Its main creditor, the state-backed Korea Development Bank, said it had not yet met to decide its position on the agreement but it was looking at it "in a positive light".
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2. Tanker Consolidation Too
Could dramatic consolidation be on the cards for the tanker sector? That’s the speculation in Oslo where in the wake of Frontline’s $100m private placement on Friday, analysts are now wondering if John Fredriksen will use the cash raised to buy out Peter Georgiopoulos’s Gener8 Maritime. Analyst reports from leading banks in Oslo in recent days have mulled the likelihood of this deal becoming reality. “Can Frontline do the same as BW LPG and go after Gener8?” wrote DNB Markets analyst Nicolay Dyvik in an update on Friday. BW LPG has recently completed the takeover of Aurora LPG.
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3. Somali Port Shaken by Bombing
A suicide car bomb that went off at the entrance of Somalia’s biggest port in its capital Mogadishu on Sunday has killed at least four people, police said. "It was a heavily-loaded suicide car bomb. So far, we have counted four civilians dead and seven others injured," Major Abdullahi Ali, a police officer responding to the attack, said. "Some people are missing, and so the death toll may rise," he said, adding the blast had destroyed nearby shops. The bodies of four victims could be seen strewn outside the facility, in a street filled with rubble from damaged tea shops, according to witnesses.
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4. Tanker Attacked off Nigeria
The product tanker "Sochima" was attacked by pirates in Gulf of Guinea on 40 nautical miles south off Brass, Nigeria. The vessel was approached by speedboat with armed men, who tried to board the vessel and take control. The navy security team aboard of the product tanker thwarted the pirates attack and succeeded to wound some of the armed men. The speedboat fled away and abandoned the attack, while the crew reported the accident to the local authorities are resumed the voyage. The vessel successfully arrived at Lagos, where will be held investigation from the navy and local authorities.
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5. Transit Corridor Considered
Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia are considering to establish a high security corridor along the Sulu Sea and Sabah to tackle piracy that has resulted in several attacks and kidnappings this year. There has been a spate of attacks which have threatened commercial vessels prompting trilateral negotiations between these countries to find ways of securing the region under what is being termed as an IND-MAL-PHI program. A similar initiative started in 2009 in the Gulf of Aden, called the Internationally Recommended Transit Corridor, or IRTC, successfully curbed piracy attacks in the region over a span of several years.
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6. More Cocaine Found on Maersk Ship
Mexican authorities have seized another 278 kilograms of cocaine from a container aboard the Maersk-operated "Maersk Laura" containership at the port of Manzanillo. The Mexican navy said the drugs were found in 295 packages hidden inside a cargo of industrial rollers. The container had travelled from Arica, Chile. The drugs mark the second illicit shipment tied to the Maersk Laura. On November 8, authorities seized another 230 kilograms of cocaine from inside a container arriving to the port also aboard the Maersk Laura. It is believed that Thursday’s find was tied to the same investigation and inspection of cargo.
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7. Substantial Shipping Loan Losses
As the shipping market remained in very difficult conditions, the German-based provider of shipping finance HSH Nordbank reported a “substantial” loan loss provisioning on ship loans in the first nine months of 2016. Namely, the bank said the loan loss provisioning of EUR -979 million (USD 1.03 billion) before the guarantee had to be applied during the period, of which 98 percent is related to the non-core-bank. In the first nine months of the year HSH Nordbank continued to reduce its legacy assets while setting aside substantially higher provisions for its shipping loans.
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8. Court Dismisses Piracy Trials
The Seychelles Court of Appeal has ruled on two separate piracy cases, deciding that there was not enough evidence to maintain the conviction of five Somalis while dismissing the appeals submitted by eight others. The President of the appeal’s court — judge Francis MacGregor and judges Anthony Fernnado, Satyabhooshun Gupt Domah and January Msoffe — delivered the ruling at the end of its last session for 2016. The appeals from the five suspected Somali pirates relates to their June 2016 conviction to 12 years imprisonment by the Seychelles Supreme Court, after they were found guilty of piracy offences.
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9. Hanjin Ships Sold On
Four of Hanjin Shipping’s 4,275 TEU containerships were sold to South Korean company Korea Marine Transport Co (KMTC) for a price of USD 22.4 million, according to data provided by VesselsValue. The 2008-built Panamaxes, which were sold through a bank sale, are the "Hanjin Durban", "Hanjin Norfolk", "Hanjin Piraeus" and "Hanjin Rio de Janeiro". Featuring a length of 260 meters and a width of 32 meters, the vessels, built by South Korea’s Samsung Heavy Industries Co, fetched a price tag of USD 5.6 million each. VesselsValue data shows that each of the boxships has a market value of around USD 5.3 million.
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10. Pirate Tale on Netflix
There are no shortage of shocking hostage stories in the new Netflix docu-series "Captive". Being kidnapped by pirates sounds like the plot of an action movie, but it’s exactly what happened to Rachel and Paul Chandler, whose harrowing 400 days of captivity are depicted in Episode 3. In 2009, the British couple excitedly embarked on their dream journey across the Indian Ocean — but it wasn’t long before they were captured by Somali pirates and subjected to daily physical and emotional torture. Over a year later, the couple was released in November 2010, the series captures all the action and tension of the period.
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Daily news feed from Seacurus Ltd – providers of MLC crew insurance solutions  www.seacurus.com

 

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S Jones
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