Seacurus Daily: Top Ten News Stories 08/11/2018
1. Choppy Waters for Greek Shipping
Thanks to President Trump there may be choppy waters ahead for Greece’s vital shipping industry. As the US this week reinstated a global ban on Iranian oil exports, there are few countries outside of Iran that will be more affected by the move than Greece. This is because Greece’s merchant shipping fleet is also the largest transporter of Iranian oil. With every other country told to stop immediately, or else face their own knock-on trade penalties from the US, Greece’s oil tankers may be about to see a substantial drop in business.
https://bbc.in/2JNnLYI
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2. Time for more Scrap
Dry bulk owners have been urged to scrap more ships or face extreme volatility. Writing in a new industry report, Precious Shipping’s MD Khalid Hashim noted: “Negative sentiment has started to dissipate from the market, resulting, unfortunately in shipowners refusing to scrap their older ships”. This has allowed an overall net growth of 2.27% in the first nine months of the year.
https://bit.ly/2SVIqhq
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3. Training Must Evolve
The rapid evolution of technology is not being followed by the development of maritime training personnel competence, and the current STCW is already behind the times, this is according to experts speaking at the CrewConnect conference in Manila. Natalie Shaw, director of employment affairs at the ICS, said STCW must adapt to all the technological change sweeping through the industry.
https://bit.ly/2ST33KW
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4. Ballast Water Management Claim
A claim recently handled by International Transport Intermediaries Club (ITIC) highlights that failure to keep a proper onboard record of regulatory and legislative changes can have costly consequences for shipowners and their intermediaries. The crew of a ship which frequently traded to U.S. ports found themselves in contravention of state legislation, on this occasion, such deballasting was in violation of new regulations which had entered into force in July 2017, requiring ships entering from international waters to deballast more than 200 nautical miles from the coast of California.
https://bit.ly/2F5Sz8e
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5. Iron Ore Runaway Problem
BHP’s stockpiles of iron ore at Port Hedland, in Western Australia’s Pilbara region, are not expected to be enough to meet its export contracts following the deliberate derailment of an out-of-control train on Monday. The train, loaded with iron ore, was deliberately derailed after it traveled over 90 kilometers without a driver. The nearly three-kilometer train and 268 wagons, was traveling from Newman to Port Hedland when the driver stopped to inspect a wagon. The train moved off before the driver could get back on board. No one was injured in the incident.
https://bit.ly/2FdeGtv
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6. Owners New Bunkering Regime
Asian ship owners have started taking 0.5% sulfur low sulfur bunker fuel more than a year ahead of when the sulfur cap set by the IMO starts in 2020. âWe have started buying 0.5% sulfur bunker fuel for testing in China and Singapore,â a source at a North Asian shipping company said. âWe took 0.5% low sulfur bunker fuel as a sample, and we are analyzing at our laboratory,â another shipping source in North Asia said. And, âWe have had a big step up in inquiries from ship owners, especially recently,â a Singapore-based source at an oil major said Wednesday.
https://bit.ly/2zEak8E
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7. Russian Dry Dock Gets Wet
The Russian Navy does not have a domestic replacement with equivalent capacity for the giant floating drydock PD-50, which sank out from beneath the service’s only aircraft carrier last month. According to United Shipbuilding Corporation CEO Alexei Rakhmanov, there are no other graving docks or floating drydocks in Russia with the capacity to handle the carrier, the aging Soviet-era vessel Admiral Kuznetsov. The PD-50 was a key facility at the 82nd Shipbuilding Plant, located near the Northern Fleet’s home port of Murmansk. The floating drydock was commissioned in the early 1980s.
https://bit.ly/2DbssKK
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8. Sudan Fights Compensation
U.S. Supreme Court justices appeared divided on efforts by Sudan, backed by the U.S. government, to avoid paying $314.7 million in damages to American sailors injured in a 2000 deadly bombing of the Navy destroyer USS Cole by the al Qaeda militant group. The justices heard Sudanâs appeal of a 2015 lower court ruling that allowed the sailors to collect the damages. Sudanâs contention is it was not properly notified of the lawsuit when the claims were delivered in 2010 to its embassy in Washington rather than to its minister of foreign affairs in the Sudanese capital Khartoum, as required by U.S. and international law.
https://bit.ly/2Qu0ltJ
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9. Doubts About Blockchain
The announcement that five shipping lines and four terminal operators are to form a consortium to develop a Global Shipping Business Network (GSBN) has raised more questions than it answered. GSBN will be a blockchain-enabled platform that will help digitise the industry, set standards and transform documentation flows, the companies said.
The participants comprise Ocean Alliance members CMA CGM, Cosco/ OOCL and Evergreen â but also, interestingly THE alliance partner Yang Ming, as well as DP World, Hutchison Ports, PSA and Shanghai International Port. The tech company is CargoSmart.
https://bit.ly/2QqYC8H
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10. Shipping Struggling With Cyber
The U.S. maritime industry as a whole is not prepared to respond to todayâs cyber threats, putting it at severe risk of being targeted, according to a new maritime cyber security survey of key maritime stakeholders. The survey confirms that rapidly evolving technologies deployed throughout the U.S. maritime industry as way of increasing efficiency and competitiveness also present significant cybersecurity risks, which the industry as a whole is unprepared to shoulder.
https://bit.ly/2Phv9Bx
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Daily news feed from Seacurus Ltd â providers of MLC crew insurance solutions www.seacurus.com
