BEIJING, Sept. 13, 2022 /CNW/ –An initiative was released on Friday at the 2022 Silk Road Maritime International Cooperation Forum kicking off Thursday in Xiamen, southeast China’s Fujian Province, calling on shipping logistics firms to strive to maintain unimpeded supply chains and serve the domestic and international economic flows.

To achieve the goals, the 2022 Silk Road Maritime International Cooperation Forum Xiamen Initiative, jointly released by related organizations from shipping logistics sectors around the world, proposes to further build a multi-cooperation pattern and a multi-party cooperation mechanism to better serve domestic and international economic connectivity and exchanges.

It also proposes to strengthen infrastructure construction and management and collaboration to jointly promote the construction of the Silk Road Maritime platform and give full play to the roles of ports as hubs, pursue digital and green development, build first-class logistics facilities and shipping hubs, enhance innovation, and vigorously improve service capabilities and professional levels, so as to better serve the domestic market and a higher-level opening-up.

Silk Road Maritime is a shipping-themed international comprehensive logistics service brand and platform for the Belt and Road construction, and is founded on December 2018. The Silk Road Maritime International Cooperation Forum has been held for four consecutive sessions since 2019, and strives to become an international exchange and cooperation platform serving the joint construction of the Belt and Road.

Source: https://www.userwalls.news/n/xinhua-silk-road-initiative-released-2022-silk-road-maritime-international-cooperation-forum-3808619/

The National Transportation Safety Board has concluded that the capsizing of the fishing vessel Emmy Rose – which went down with all hands off Massachusetts in late 2020 – was likely due to an unsecured hatch cover on its lazarette, which could have allowed rapid flooding when water accumulated on deck.

In the early hours of November 23, 2020, Emmy Rose was under way off Provincetown, Massachusetts with about 50,000 pounds of fish in her holds. She was headed to Gloucester, with winds of 20 knots and following seas of about six feet in height. At 0130 hours, the U.S. Coast Guard’s Boston command center received an EPIRB signal from the vessel; no other communication came in, and the four members of the crew were never found. The wreck was later located in 800 feet of water some three nautical miles west of her last known position, intact and upright on the seafloor.

Courtesy NTSB

According to the Emmy Rose’s manager, the hatch cover for the lazarette – located between the stern ramps on the trawler’s back deck – had no securing mechanisms at all, contrary to the requirements of thevessel’s stability booklet. The force of waves over the transom in following seas could have knocked off the cover and allowed seawater to flood into the compartment, according to NTSB. Accumulation of water on deck may have been exacerbated by closed restrictor plates on many of her freeing ports, which would have limited the outflow of water from the deck. As she settled lower in the water, downflooding could have progressed into the fish hold, which had a weathertight (but not watertight) wooden hatch cover. An analysis by the U.S. Coast Guard Marine Safety Center determined that this could have resulted in a stern-first sinking.

Courtesy NTSB

To address the identified risks, NTSB called on the U.S. Coast Guard to expand the scope of commercial fishing vessels’ third-party safety inspections to include an examination of freeing ports and hatch covers.

The agency also reiterated its previous call for mandatory personal locator beacons (PLBs) for all mariners and fishermen.

“Had the crewmembers of the Emmy Rose carried personal locator beacons on board and had they been able to activate them and abandon the vessel, search and rescue crews would have had continuously updated and correct coordinates of individual crewmembers’ locations, thus enhancing their chances of survival,” NTSB concluded.

Source: https://www.maritime-executive.com/article/ntsb-loose-hatch-cover-may-have-caused-the-loss-of-the-emmy-rose

Turkish officials confirmed today that the decommissioned Brazilian Navy carrier NAe São Paulo which was to have been dismantled at Aliaga has reversed course and is now heading back to Brazil. The tug towing the carrier changed its AIS signal now showing that they will arrive back in Rio de Janeiro on October 2. The two-month roundtrip is a similar fate to her sistership the French aircraft carrier Clemenceau which was also turned away by the Indian government in 2006.

Writing that the will of the Turkish people was being honored, Ednan Arslan, a member of the Turkish parliament confirmed the reports that the carrier was returning to Brazil. He Tweeted an image of the AIS ending two weeks of speculation and initially a standoff between Brazil and Turkey.

Like her sistership, the issue for the NAe São Paulo became the question of the presence of toxic materials aboard the carrier and if a proper inspection had been done before the sale to the breakers. Last year, Brazil auctioned the carrier, which had been decommissioned in 2018, with reports that only one of the eight bids was found to meet the conditions and have the necessary credentials. The carrier departed Rio on August 4, 2022, under tow.

Shortly after she departed environmentalists began protesting citing what they believed was a fault inspection of the vessel that reported only minor amounts of toxins aboard. The watchdog organization NGO Shipbreaking reported that only 12 percent of the spaces aboard the carrier had been tested to prepare the report which estimated just 9.6 tons of asbestos-contaminated materials onboard the vessel. The Clemenceau by comparison contained at least 600 tons of asbestos. The report failed to test electrical cabling and said that there was no presence of PCBs. Finally, the NGO contended the carrier had been used by France in the 1960s with atmospheric nuclear bomb testing in the Pacific meaning that it could have radioactive contamination.

Turkey responded by calling for a second inspection of the vessel before it arrived but Brazil said the vessel had already left making it impossible. Two weeks ago, Turkey’s Environment, Urban Planning and Climate Change Minister, Murat Kurum, announced that due to Brazil’s failure to carry out a second audit process that “the Brazilian navy ship NAe Sao Paulo, which will arrive at the ship dismantling facility in Izmir Aliaga, will be sent back.”

The tug towing the carrier was waiting off northern Africa for the past two weeks with reports that the British authorities had denied a permit to transit the Strait of Gibraltar. Media reports indicated that Brazil had agreed that the vessel should return but it had continued to linger off the Moroccan coast.

Commissioned in 1962 as the Foch, the 32,800 dwt carrier (fully loaded) was a sistership to Clemenceau. France operated her for 37 years selling her while she was still in service in 2000 to Brazil where she would have a career troubled by mechanical failures. After a fire in 2012, Brazil had said she would be fully reconditioned, but by 2017 she was listed as demobilized and officially decommissioned the following year.

The Clemenceau had become the center of world attention, including protestors blocking her entry into the Suez Canal, in 2006 when she was turned around after an Indian court ruled that she had to return to France. She was finally dismantled starting in 2009 at a specialized facility in the UK that met international standards for the handling of toxic materials.

Source: https://www.maritime-executive.com/article/tow-for-toxic-aircraft-carrier-reverses-course-back-to-brazil

The U.S. government announced a $20 million federal RAISE (Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity) grant to the port of Los Angeles on September 7th. The grant has been awarded to resolve a trucking bottleneck by constructing a rail-roadway grade separation and by improving trucking access to the state highway system.

A grade separation is a junction of two or more routes that are separated by height so that the flow of traffic in one does not impede flow in the other. There is an 80-acre marine storage facility (MSF) on Terminal island which caters to the storage needs of all the ports in the Pedro Bay complex. However, access to the MSF is severely limited for truckers as the heavily used railway tracks loop around the complex, and the sole access to the facility gets hampered by a low clearance tunnel. Currently, truckers have to travel a circuitous route to get to the MSF. In addition to this, while in the tunnel truckers can only travel at about 5mph to prevent accidents.

The awarded project involves the construction of a 4-lane rail-roadway grade separation. This will allow trucks much better access to the marine storage facility. The project will also connect the trucks directly to the state highways in two directions. The completion of this project will save 2500 truck-hours worth of delay per day. It will also reduce emissions by preventing the idling of engines in the tunnel and reducing the longer travel route by 1200 truck miles per day. The project will begin in the coming 15 to 18 months and will generate 300 new jobs.

Source: https://www.fleetmon.com/maritime-news/2022/39493/port-la-receives-20-million-federal-grant-resolve-/

The U.S. Navy accused a sailor of setting the 2020 fire on the USS Bonhomme Richard, but it refuses to release records in the case as the law requires.

Despite a 2016 law requiring more transparency of court-martials, the U.S. Navy is refusing to release nearly all court documents in a high-profile case in which a sailor faces life in prison.

Seaman Recruit Ryan Mays, 21, has been charged with aggravated arson and hazarding a vessel in the 2020 fire that destroyed the USS Bonhomme Richard. Mays has maintained his innocence.

On July 12, 2020, a fire started on the amphibious assault ship as it was moored at Naval Base San Diego and raged for more than four days. The Navy was not able to put the fire out until the ship was so badly damaged that the service had to scrap it, a more than $1 billion loss.

Although the Navy has accused Mays of starting the fire, the service’s eight-month investigation found plenty of blame to go around. A more than 400-page report concluded that leaders, from those on board the Bonhomme Richard all the way to a three-star admiral, had failed to ensure the ship’s safety and allowed it to become a fire hazard. Fire response was also grossly mismanaged by leaders who had little understanding of how it should have worked, the Navy’s investigation found. Top Navy leaders called the dayslong blaze preventable and unacceptable.

Last week, the military judge in Mays’ case denied requests made separately by the defense and ProPublica to make the records public. Cmdr. Derek Butler sidestepped the defense’s claims — that the government was violating Mays’ Sixth Amendment right to a public trial — and ProPublica’s assertions of the First Amendment. Butler didn’t address the constitutional issues at hand and instead said he didn’t have the authority to release the records.

In July, ProPublica had first requested from the Navy’s Office of the Judge Advocate General all court records that have already been filed and discussed extensively in open court in the Mays case. That office denied access to all but two records already made public, refusing to release any more until the court-martial concludes — and only if Mays is found guilty. The court-martial is scheduled to begin Sept. 19.

In August, ProPublica, along with Paul LeBlanc, a retired Navy judge and lawyer, filed a motion asking Butler to release the documents, arguing that the First Amendment requires the government to make the records public. ProPublica also argued that the public has a strong interest in understanding how and why the government is prosecuting Mays and in ensuring he receives a fair trial.

“They’re attempting to put someone in prison for a very long time, and what they’re filing is hidden from the people,” LeBlanc said. “These documents are filed on behalf of the people of the United States, and the people of the United States should have the same right to see them and know what the government is doing on their behalf as they do in federal court.”

“How can anybody have any sort of trust and confidence in a system if it won’t let them read what prosecutors are saying on their behalf?”

In 2016, Congress passed a law requiring the military to make court-martial dockets, records and filings accessible to the public. The law was prompted in part by the military’s lack of transparency in sexual assault cases. Congress’ goal was to make court-martial records as available to the public as federal court records are.

The law specifically states that the military should facilitate access during “pretrial, trial, post-trial, and appellate processes.” But the Department of the Defense has decided that the law only applies once a court-martial is over. It is simply too hard to turn court-martial records over to the public while a trial is happening, Capt. Jason Jones, the prosecutor in the Mays case, wrote in his brief asking the judge to deny records to the public. Military courts don’t have a clerk to coordinate records, and unlike civilian courts, which are in one place, military courts have to operate in a fluid environment, such as a war zone, he said.

Butler also cited the 2016 law aimed at increasing transparency as why he didn’t have authority to release the records. He wrote that the law did not explicitly grant courts the power to release records but rather the secretary of the defense. He did not address ProPublica’s argument that he has the authority and obligation to release the records under the First Amendment, which Congress cannot take away.

ProPublica Deputy General Counsel Sarah Matthews said the news organization disagreed with Butler’s interpretation of the law and would next ask the top lawyer for the Department of Defense, Caroline Krass, to clarify what the law requires the services do.
The federal government has released the charge sheet and a search warrant that detailed the Navy’s case against Mays. By withholding all other records, including those favorable to the defense, the Navy is seeking to “shield the record in secrecy to its advantage,” Matthews wrote in the motion to Butler.

“Records like these are open in every other courtroom in America. These records aren’t sealed or restricted. They have been discussed in open court, in a proceeding that could send a man to prison,” Matthews said separately. “The Navy believes it can arbitrarily delay or even deny access completely to these records, something all the more troubling because Congress has passed a law demanding more, not less, transparency from our armed services in cases like this.”

Source: https://www.marinelink.com/news/us-navy-withholding-court-records-499384

As 2021 developed and Covid-19 restrictions waned, the global economy’s GDP recovered from -3.1% to +5.9% year-on-year, seaborne trade from -3.5% to +4% year-on-year, whilst the shipping fleet’s growth was limited to a 2.9% increase.

Further, Athens-based Petrofin Research in its annual review of Global Ship Finance reports the Petrofin Index for Global Ship Finance which commenced at 100 in 2008 is up by one point, from 62 in 2021 to 63, showing a rise for the first time in 11 years.

At the same time, the lending by the top 40 banks’ backing shipping in 2021 was higher at $290.12bn up from $286.9bn in 2020. This 1.12% growth year-on-year may appear small but it does represent the first rise since 2011.

Petrofin Research says the turnaround was assisted by continuing central banks’ monetary easing, low interest rates and a resurgence of demand for goods and commodities leading to increased congestion and fleet inefficiency.

As a result of these developments, charter rates across most sectors (except for tankers) shot up, by 50% for LNGs, up to 185% for dry bulk and multi-fold for containers according to Clarkson’s statistics. Vessel values followed suit, whilst scrapping decelerated. All in all, a remarkable turnaround, says Ted Petropoulos, head of Petrofin Research.

“Banks, under these favourable conditions and prospects, faced increased demand for loans, as well as competition from other non-banking lenders,” says Petroloulos.

Within the top 40, twenty-one banks are based in Europe, 16 are Asian/Australia based, and three North American based.

Asian and Australian banks (APAC) show the only growth, from $100.85bn to $114.75bn APAC increased their share of the global portfolios from 35% to 39.5%. European banks’ share declined further by $9.78bn 5.8% year-on-year.

Within Europe, the big decline continues by German banks although the trend has slowed. Greek banks showed a year-on-year growth of 14.2 %, whilst Scandinavian banks continued their overall decline de-emphasising lending in favour of use of their services to shipping.

Relative newcomers / small banks such as Bank of Cyprus, Hellenic Bank of Cyprus, Norway’s Pareto, the US’ M&M bank, grew during 2021 and provided plurality to the available sources of bank finance.

Petrofin Research, said it can provide “a cautious, indicative figure for global ship finance, including all forms of lending, leasing and alternative providers, of approx. $500bn”.

“The total global bank lending of all banks, including local banks, amounts to approx. $340bn, or some two-thirds of the global ship finance total,” said Petrofin.

It warns however, there is increasing evidence that due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, together with the high energy prices, geographical sanctions, higher interest rates, slowdown in global growth and concerns over an incoming recession, bank lending in 2022 has been disrupted as caution prevails amongst banks.

Further, the Chinese selective lockdowns and economic slowdown has added to the concerns and is having a temporary impact on Chinese leasing as well.

Source: https://www.seatrade-maritime.com/finance-insurance/ship-finance-returns-growth-first-time-11-years

The Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, NIMASA, and the Nigerian Immigration Service, NIS have agreed to deepen existing interagency collaboration with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding, MoU on Seafarers’ Travel document amongst others.

This agreement was reached when the Comptroller General of the NIS, Mr. Isah Idris Jere led senior officials of the Service on a working visit to the Management of NIMASA. The Director General of NIMASA, Dr. Bashir Jamoh noted that the role of the Nigerian Immigration Service in enhancing security in the maritime domain is crucial, adding that seamless issuance of travel documents to seafarers is a key component in the nation’s quest to grow the maritime industry.

Secure maritime domain

According to Dr. Jamoh, “Security on land is key to achieving a safe and secure maritime domain. NIMASA appreciates the need to work closely with the Immigration Service to improve security in the maritime domain. We need the Service to play a major role in issues of crew nationality, seafarers travel document and managing issues of stowaways, amongst others.”

The NIMASA DG also commended the contribution of the NIS in the implementation of the SPOMO Act

The DG and the Immigration Comptroller General thus agreed to develop a Memorandum of Understanding to provide a framework for the working relationship. The NIMASA DG also commended the contribution of the NIS in the implementation of the Suppression of Piracy and other Maritime Offences (SPOMO) Act, stating “The passing into law of the SPOMO Act, and subsequent prosecutions recorded under that law has involved working closely with the NIS. With that being said, NIMASA will continue to offer our helping hand to the Nigeria Immigration Service even as we anticipate further collaboration.”

Dockworkers registration nationwide

On his part, the NIS Comptroller General identified the issuance of temporary work permits to international vessel crews as well as preventing stowaways, as areas of frequent collaboration between both organs of Government while also commending NIMASA’s automation of dockworkers registration nationwide.

According to him, “Our visit to NIMASA is a signal that the Nigeria Immigration Service seeks continued collaboration and deepened synergy as we collectively work to address the issues facing us in our coastal lines and in maintaining the integrity of our territorial waters. We welcome the Agency’s automation of dockworkers registration and issuance of biometric identity cards as a great step in the task of securing the nation’s ports.”

Source: https://www.maritimeinformed.com/news/nigerian-maritime-administration-safety-agency-nimasa-co-1629709906-ga.1662911661.html