Seacurus Daily: Top Ten Maritime News Stories 31/03/2017
1. Hyundai Looks to New Orders
Hyundai Merchant Marine (HMM) is readying to launch a tender for its first new ship orders in four years with the Korean carrier tipped to be in the market initially for up to 10 VLCCs. The Korean flagship carrier, fresh from restructuring last year, will take advantage of new state-backed financing to get local yards busy again. HMM is thought to be in the market for an initial order of five VLCCs and might tack on five options to the deal. VLCCs are currently going for around $80m a unit in South Korea. The nation’s big three yards, Hyundai Heavy, Samsung Heavy and Daewoo Shipbuilding, are all thought to be ready to lodge bids.
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2. ITF Arrests Troublesome Vessel
The International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) arrested the ship "Malaviya Seven" on behalf of its crew on Wednesday. The ITF says the vessel’s owners have effectively abandoned the crew in Aberdeen, Scotland. The vessel has been detained by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency at the ITF’s request after a routine inspection revealed that 15 of the Indian crew had gone unpaid for four months. The "Malaviya Seven", and her sister ship, the "Malaviya Twenty", are OSVs owned by GOL Offshore.
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3. Masters Expected to See Future
According to UK P&I Club, a decision by the Dutch Court of Appeal, seemingly means that masters of ships must also be masters of the unknown – on top of all the other job requirements. A recent case involving a ship involved a cargo of steel plates and coils loaded in China and discharged in the Netherlands. The ship’s voyage involved sailing through different climates. The voyage took place in winter, so she sailed from a cold China, through the warm Singapore straights nearing the equator and then back up into a very cold Europe. This allegedly caused damage to the cargo, for which the receiver sought to recover damages.
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4. Ship Spill Owner Charged
Court charges have been laid against the owners of a bulk carrier that spilled thousands of litres of bunker fuel into Vancouver’s English Bay in April 2015. Alassia NewShips Management, the Greek company that owns the 2005-built vessel "Marathassa", faces 10 pollution-related charges and potential fines in the millions of dollars. Alassia NewShips Management has applied to Canada’s federal court to have the case delayed on the procedural grounds that the court summons relating to the case was delivered to people who are not company employees.
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5. Norwegians Look to Rigs
Norwegian tycoons Trøim and Fredriksen are going all in on rig purchases while droves of investors look to jump on for the ride. If the market continues its recovery, they’ll do well, writes David Carter Shinn from Bassoe Offshore. From a fortnight ago, there have been two offshore rig transactions involving 17 rigs. Rig values are now rising again; and a lot of people are betting on a full market recovery and a return to good times. John Fredriksen, via a new entity called Northern Drilling, has purchased the Norwegian sector, high spec semisub West Mira from Hyundai Heavy for a price of around $360m.
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6. New Rules for New Ships
Likely upcoming remote-controlled vessels and Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships (MASS) will force all members of the maritime sector and maritime nations to cooperate in ensuring a regulatory regime is in place that covers unmanned ships, according to a gathering at the Insurance institute of London (IIL) covered by Insurance Marine News. Robert Veal, a research fellow at the University of Southampton, was introduced in the Old Library at Lloyd’s by Andrew Bardot, executive officer at International Group of P&I Clubs. Bardot noted that, relatively speaking, the technology of unmanned ships was the easy part.
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7. Seafarer Dies in Custody
An Azerbaijani seafarer has died of a heart attack while being held in detention in Libya. The man was working on a Turkish controlled bunker tanker, "Captain Khayyam", which was detained off the Libyan coast last month, having been charged with illegally taking fuel from the country. After significant diplomatic wrangling the corpse of the deceased has now been returned to Azerbaijan via Turkey. The other crewmembers, a mix of Azerbaijanis, Turks and Ukrainians, are set to face trial on April 11. Their current jail conditions are described as squalid.
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8. Big Data Impacts Smuggling
For thousands of years, maritime authorities have relied on tip-offs, patrols, investigations and random inspections to find smuggled goods. Today they have a variety of additional methods at their disposal, and one of the most promising is using big data to look at every vessel’s historical behaviour. Experts now collect, vet and analyse AIS, along with a variety of other commercial data sources on maritime traffic. Just having access to the massive quantity of data that the world’s fleet generates is not sufficient: using algorithms to find specific ships that may be involved in illicit activity based on a number of "red flag" behaviors.
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9. Video of Ship Smash
Some incredible video coming from Nicaragua earlier this week showing a collision between a general cargo ship and smaller passenger vessel on the Escondido River. The incident was captured on video by a passenger of the smaller vessel, identified as the Captain D: The Nicaraguan Navy confirmed the incident occurred Tuesday morning on Nicaragua’s Escondido River approximately 25 miles east of El Rama. All 4o passengers and crew members of the Captain D were rescued before the ship sank a few hours of the crash, the Navy said. The 1988 Antigua and Barbuda-flagged Jan Caribe has a gross tonnage of 2770.
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10. COSCO in a Mess
China’s COSCO Shipping Holdings Co Ltd made a loss last year of $1.44 billion, the company reported on Thursday, due to both persistently weak freight rates and restructuring costs. Freight shipping firms have been hit hard by a prolonged downturn in rates caused by overcapacity and a slowdown in global trade.
COSCO, the world’s fourth-largest container shipping line, became a new company last year, born out of the merger of two major domestic shipping firms, making year-on-year comparisons difficult. Since then it has been restructuring, selling some units at a loss and focusing on container shipping.
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Daily news feed from Seacurus Ltd – providers of MLC crew insurance solutions www.seacurus.com
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