American Waterways Operators Releases Cyber Risk Guide

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December 13, 2018

The American Waterways Operators has released a best practices document to help the tugboat, towboat and barge industry manage cyber risk and detect and respond to cyber attacks.

The document, Cyber Risk Management: Best Practices for the Towing Industry, Version 1.0, is the product of a year-long initiative undertaken by the Cyber Risk Management Quality Action Team, a working group of the Coast Guard-AWO Safety Partnership.

The best practices are aligned with the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Cybersecurity Framework which the Coast Guard has incorporated into guidance for other segments of the maritime industry – and clarify and expand on them to make them actionable for towing companies. The document also includes information about how to conduct a cyber risk assessment and report a cyber incident.

The Quality Action Team encourages companies to take a tailored approach to cyber risk management that incorporates policy and procedures into a company’s existing safety management system.

The U.S. tugboat, towboat and barge industry transports over 760 million tons of commodities annually.

Read Cyber Risk Guide

Source:maritime-executive

Top Bunker Traders Implicated in Petrobras Scandal

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December 13, 2018

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Law enforcement investigators in Brazil have unveiled new allegations regarding corruption in Petrobras' oil and petroleum product trading, with evidence implicating several of the world's leading bunkering companies.

"There is evidence that Vitol, Chemium, Trafigura, Cockett, Mercuria, Arcadia, Oil & Transport (OTT), Chemoil, Glencore, Aegean, Oceanconnect and WFS would pay commissions to intermediaries in the purchase and sale operations of fuels with Petrobras, to the benefit of the companies and to the detriment of the state company," said State Judge Gabriela Hardt in a statement. "The criminal scheme handled at least US $31 million in illegal amounts and undue advantages."

The alleged scheme involved illicit payments to third-party brokers, who would then pass the funds on to Petrobras officials in the form of bribes. The Petrobras officials would then provide the payees with commercially-advantageous information and terms.

Specifically, prosecutors allege that former World Fuel Services employee Fernando Luiz Guimarães Nicola, a WFS executive based in Brazil who later transferred to competitor Cockett, may have entered into arrangements with Petrobras bunker trader Jeceny Jorge Lourenço Rodrigues. Jeceny is suspected of involvement in a million-dollar bribery scheme.

Hardt ordered Petrobras to hand over emails and calendar records from Jeceny's accounts, along with records from former Petrobras employees Rodrigo Garcia Berkowitz, Carlos Roberto Martins Barbosa, César Joaquim Rodrigues da Silva, Marcus Antônio Pacheco Alcoforado, Jorge de Oliveira Rodrigues and Márcio Pinto de Magalhães.

In a statement, Petrobras said that it "collaborates with the authorities that lead Operation Lava Jato and is recognized by the Federal Prosecutor's Office and by the Supreme Court as a victim of the crimes that have been uncovered." The firm added that it dismisses employees involved in allegedly corrupt deals when strong evidence suggests their culpability.

Top oil trading houses implicated

To date, the long-running Lava Jato inquiry has concentrated on Petrobras' large construction contracts, and allegations regarding the firm's oil-trading activities are only now emerging. Prosecutors have issued 11 arrest warrants, six subpoenas, 26 search warrants and dozens of court orders in connection with this 57th phase of the long-running investigation, which has already brought down some of Brazil's most prominent political and business figures.

Top commodities traders Vitol, Glencore and Trafigura have been singled out by prosecutors for heavy involvement in the alleged scheme. According to Brazil's federal police, these three firms may have made bribery payments to Petrobras officials totaling more than $15 million. In exchange, Petrobras employees allegedly arranged for fuel trades and storage tank rentals at non-market rates. The trades affected covered a wide range of petroleum products, including fuel oils, vacuum gas oil, bunkers and asphalt.

Vitol, Glencore and Trafigura did tens of billions of dollars in business with Brazil's state petroleum company over the period in question, leaving considerable room for an investigation.

Source:maritime-executive

GAO: U.S. Navy “Will Take Years” to Improve Readiness

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December 13, 2018

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The Government Accountability Office has completed a review of the U.S. Navy's recent efforts to improve readiness, and it foresees that corrective action "will take years to implement."

Since the two deadly collisions involving the destroyers USS John S. McCain and USS Fitzgerald in 2017, the Navy has begun to overhaul its crewing policies and training programs in an attempt to address shortcomings. However, GAO reports that manning shortfalls and experience gaps continue to contribute to high sailor workload, and are likely to continue through at least 2021.

In the wake of the twin casualties last year, the Navy conducted two internal reviews and identified more than 100 separate actions to take in order to improve readiness in the surface fleet. So far, it has implemented about 70 percent of these recommendations, and GAO asserts that the service "continues to struggle" to rebuild readiness – a potential hurdle to the Navy's plans to expand its active fleet by 25 percent.

Both the McCain and the Fitzgerald were attached to the Japan-based 7th Fleet, and GAO testified in 2017 that it had found significant training and operational certification shortfalls in this busy overseas command. Based on GAO's analysis of current data, the Navy has improved the percentage of warships with lapsed certifications in Japan, from 41 percent of vessels with certifications expired in September 2017 to 9 percent as of November 2018. As of November, less than 3 percent of certifications had expired on 7th Fleet ships in operational status.

Manning shortfalls

Further fleet-wide challenges include "outdated standards" for shipboard manning levels, leading to overburdened crews and long hours. "Until manpower requirements are reassessed across the fleet, the Navy risks that ship crews will continue to be undersized and sailors will be overworked with potential negative effects on readiness and safety," GAO found.

For now, the Navy is priorizing manning on its overseas-homeported ships. While official numbers on manning have improved, GAO heard from Japan-based sailors in group interviews that ship workload has not decreased, and it is still difficult to complete the workload while getting enough sleep. The Navy expects that manning challenges will continue through at least 2021 as the Navy builds up its head count and trains its new sailors.

Maintenance issues

As previously reported, insufficient maintenance capacity continues to plague the Navy's surface and submarine units, GAO found: only a quarter of scheduled maintenance availabilities for warships were completed on time from 2011-2014. These figures have not improved in the intervening years, and GAO calculated that surface ships, subs and carriers across the fleet were unavailable for a total of 74 ship-years between 2012-2018 due to maintenance delays. The daily count of delayed ships has risen steadily over the same period, and roughly one quarter of the total occured during FY2018 alone.

According to GAO, the delays at Navy-run yards are attributable in part to outdated and limited equipment, which renders operations less efficient. The service has a $21 billion, 20-year plan to correct these deficiencies, but even if funding from Congress is secured, the improvements will only appear in the long term. In addition, these yards face workforce and training challenges, which the Navy is attempting to address with retention incentives and training programs.

GAO has previously recommended that the Navy re-evaluate its policy for allocating work to private and public yards. In an update in November, the Navy told GAO that they plan to schedule two additional depot maintenance periods at private shipyards in the future.

Comparable shortfalls affect the Navy and Marine Corps aviation community. Depot maintenance for the Navy's aging F/A-18 fighters and Marines' AV-8B Harriers has grown increasingly complex as airframe hours add up, long-lived components wear out and parts availability declines, and aircraft availability has declined below target levels. Aviation depots also face the same manning and experience-level shortfalls as the public shipyards.

Source:maritime-executive

Largest LNG bunker tanker starts operations in Northwest Europe

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December 12, 2018

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The world’s largest LNG bunkering vessel owned by Babcock Schulte Energy has started operations in Northwest Europe under charter to the Blue LNG joint venture.

The 7,500 cu m Kairos was handed over to Blue LNG in the port of Klaipeda on 11 December. Blue LNG is owned 90% by Hamburg based leading LNG supplier Nauticor and the Lithuanian energy infrastructure provider KN.

“With the handover of Kairos we are securing the supply of LNG as a marine fuel in the Baltic Sea on a large-scale basis,” said Mahinde Abeynaike, ceo of Nauticor.

“Thanks to our large LNG storage tanks with a pump rate equivalent to more than 30 LNG trucks per hour and our innovative maneuvering technology, marine customers will be able to benefit from an extremely fast and safe LNG ship-to-ship supply. From now on, also large vessels can bunker LNG in the Baltic Sea.”

Built at Hyundai Mipo Dockyard the Kairos was delivered to Babcock Schulte Energy in October this year.

LNG bunkering is gaining ground ahead of the IMO’s 2020 sulphur cap with LNG as a marine fuel emitting zero SOx.

Source:seatrade-maritime

Qingdao Port has started construction of its second 300,000 tonne VLCC terminal

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December 12, 2018

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Qingdao port, the leading crude oil and ore handling port of China, has started building its second 300,000 tonne-class crude oil terminal at Dong Jia Kou port area with completion scheduled by the end of 2019.

The terminal project includes one new 300,000 tonnne-class oil berth plus one 100,000 tonne-class berth and supporting facilities. The 25m tonne new crude oil handling capacity will be added when the terminal launched operation.

Meanwhile, the port also started the construction of the 600,000 cu m crude oil storage tank at Dong Jia Kou. Jointly invested by Qingdao port and PetroChina, the tank will be mainly supporting local crude oil transportation and storage.

Qingdao port started its crude oil business in 1976 and has the country’s top imported oil product uploading capacity. Currently, Qingdao port has four sectors of Qingdao Dagang port area, Huangdao oil port area, Qianwan port area and Dongjiakou port area.

The port operates world’s largest 400,000 tonne-class ore terminal and 450,000 tonne-class crude oil terminal.

Source:seatrade-maritime

Evergreen leases 7th terminal in Kaohsiung to cater to ultra-large containerships

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December 12, 2018

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Taiwan-based Evergreen Marine has inked an agreement with Taiwan International Port Corporation (TIPC) to lease five berths at the 7th container handling centre in Kaohsiung port.

The terminals are currently under construction and will be equipped with automated operation facilities.

The 7th container handling center at Kaohsiung port, is 2,415 m in length with 18 m draught. It will be able to accommodate five 22,000 teu ultra-large containerhips simultaneously.

The first phase of the project project (two and half berths) will be completed in 2022 and the other two and half berths delivered in 2023.

Evergreen Marine has leased container terminals at Kaohsiung port since 1986 and currently has six terminals handling 3.6m teu last year, accounting for 35% of the total container volume of Kaohsiung port.

To meet the market demands of large-sized ships and keep upgrading its fleet structure, Evergreen Marine is starting to to operate 20,000 teu and larger boxships home-ported at Kaohsiung. The advanced facility of Kaohsiung 7th container centre is in line with the company’s development strategy to introduce more ultra-large container ships.

The company will receive 47 newbuildings during 2018-2011, including sixteen 2,800teu boxships, eleven 20,000 teu boxships and twenty 11,000 teu boxships.

Source:seatrade-maritime

Holland America Line Takes Delivery Of Nieuw Statendam From Fincantieri Shipyard

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December 12, 2018

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Holland America Line took delivery of Nieuw Statendam today, Nov. 29, 2018, officially making it the 15th ship in the fleet. A hand-over ceremony took place at Fincantieri’s Marghera, Italy, shipyard, and Nieuw Statendam will set sail for Venice tomorrow en route to Civitavecchia (Rome), Italy, for its Premiere Voyage with guests departing Dec. 5.

The delivery was attended by Orlando Ashford, Holland America Line’s president; Carnival Corporation’s Micky Arison, chairman of the board, and Arnold Donald, president and CEO; and Stein Kruse, chief executive officer of Holland America Group and Carnival UK. Giuseppe Bono, CEO of Fincantieri, and several other executives from both companies also attended.

“Today the Holland America Line family celebrates the addition of Nieuw Statendam to our fleet, and it’s a proud moment for everyone involved,” said Ashford. “Thank you to our partners at Fincantieri and our own team members who worked diligently to deliver the ship looking more stunning than we imagined. Nieuw Statendam represents our continued evolution of adding exciting new experiences while maintaining the hallmarks that have made Holland America Line a leader in premium cruising.”

Following its transatlantic crossing from Civitavecchia, Nieuw Statendam will spend a full season in the Caribbean sailing roundtrip from Fort Lauderdale. Nieuw Statendam’s official naming ceremony will take place in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Feb. 2.

The ship will head to its summer homeport of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in May and sail a series of northern Europe, Baltic and Iceland cruises before making its way to the Mediterranean in September for cruises out of Civitavecchia.

The 99,902-ton vessel accommodates 2,666 guests and is the ultimate expression of the Holland America Line brand. The ship features purpose-built staterooms for families and solo travellers among its 1,377 guest accommodations.

While much of the ship’s design will be similar to Koningsdam, the first Pinnacle Class ship, Nieuw Statendam will have exclusive public spaces and its own style created by leading hospitality designer Adam D. Tihany and designer and architect Bjørn Storbraaten. The ship will feature grand, light-filled spaces, visual drama and sumptuous interiors inspired by the fluid curves of musical instruments.

In addition to the stunning Dining Room, guests will delight in speciality restaurants that include newly designed Rudi’s Sel de Mer, a French seafood brasserie; pan-Asian Tamarind, with a new al fresco dining area where guests can enjoy the gentle ocean breeze; Nami Sushi, a new sushi experience within Tamarind; the award-winning Pinnacle Grill; Canaletto, with family-style Italian dining; and the new Club Orange restaurant exclusively for guests in the Club Orange program.

Additional culinary venues include Grand Dutch Cafe featuring traditional Dutch coffee and treats and European beer; Dive-In, serving up gourmet burgers and fries poolside; New York Deli & Pizza, offering made-to-order sandwiches and pies; and Lido Market, with themed serving stations that revolutionize the buffet experience.

Onboard entertainment features the innovative Music Walk offering a variety of authentic live musical experiences and genres unlike any other at sea. These include the debut of the new Rolling Stone Rock Room with classic rock hits; Lincoln Center Stage, with chamber music; Billboard Onboard, with chart-topping hits; and the popular B.B. King’s Blues Club, bringing the best of Memphis music to sea. With the 270-degree LED projection at World Stage and expanded seating on Nieuw Statendam, even more, guests will enjoy spectacular performances with panoramic visuals and sound effects.

Source:marineinsight

Royal Caribbean Named ‘Best Cruise Line’ At National Geographic Traveler Awards 2018

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December 12, 2018

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Royal Caribbean International is a winner of the 2018 National Geographic Traveler Awards Russia in the ‘Best Cruises’ category. It is the second time in three years that the cruise line has taken home the award.

The National Geographic Traveler (NGT) Awards is National Geographic Traveler magazine’s annual awards, based on an all-Russian vote for the best tourist destinations among the most popular types of vacation.

This year, the NGT Awards were presented in 25 major categories: various types of vacations, resorts, hotels, airlines, cruises, travel programs and more. Over 250,000 voters chose the best companies, regions and countries.

Natalya Bentas, Sales Manager of IR in Europe, Middle East and Africa said “We are truly delighted with this award. It is a confirmation of the positive direction Royal Caribbean is taking in Russia with our focus on creating incredible vacations for our guests on their cruise holiday. Russia is a very important market for us, and together with our Russian representatives we are working on introducing our product to the Russian consumer.”

2018 was a very important year for Royal Caribbean as Symphony of the Seas – the largest cruise ship in the world – sailed her inaugural season in the Mediterranean. Symphony is the Ultimate Family Vacation with a plethora of amenities including the Ultimate Family Suite, FlowRider, Ultimate Abyss, Adventure Ocean, AquaTheater and more.

In addition, Royal Caribbean also launched a Russian-speaking service on board Symphony, which means the Cruise Compass and menus of all on board restaurants will be translated into Russian. A nice bonus was the news that the operation of this program will continue in 2019 on European itineraries of Symphony’s sister ship, Oasis of the Seas, as well as Dubai itineraries on Jewel of the Seas.

McDermott awards UTEC multivessel survey contract offshore India

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December 12, 2018

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McDermott International has awarded surveying company UTEC a multivessel subcontract for a series of field development operations offshore eastern India.

The work scope will see UTEC, a subsidiary of subsea services group Acteon, provide surface and subsea positioning services while installing subsea flowlines, pipeline end manifolds and terminations, jumpers, risers and umbilicals. Work is due to commence this month and will take place in water depths of up to 2,100 m.

Initially UTEC’s staff and equipment will operate on board three vessels: McDermott’s pipelay vessel DLV 2000, a third-party light construction vessel and a third-party dive support vessel. Built in 2016, DLV 2000 is 184 m long and has a dynamic positioning class of DP3.

UTEC’s business director for the Asia-Pacific region, Simon Hird, said “UTEC has a global master services agreement that sees us providing survey support on a range of McDermott owned and operated vessels."

This continuity of involvement in McDermott projects has enabled UTEC to align its services with McDermott’s corporate and project objectives, which positions us well to extend our services to cover any third-party vessels that are brought in to a project.

Aberdeen-headquartered UTEC has previously undertaken survey support work on projects including INPEX’s Ichthys and Woodside GWF-2 projects in Australia, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation’s Vashishta project in India, pipelay in Brunei for Brunei Shell Petroleum and the Siakap and Kikeh projects in Malaysia.

Source:osjonline

Rovco receives further funding for live 3D survey project

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December 12, 2018

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Bristol, UK-based subsea services firm Rovco has been awarded second-phase funding for its live 3D vision and artificial intelligence (AI) survey technology.

Along with additional funding from national innovation agency Innovate UK, Rovco has secured a partnership with ScottishPower Renewables and returning partner Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult to further develop the project, known as AUV3D.

The project is expected to last 18 months and will involve additional research into applying machine learning and AI-based analysis to 3D survey and cable burial data.

In January this year, Rovco secured first-round funding from Innovate UK along with a partnership with ORE Catapult. The first phase of the project, which has now been completed, focused on developing equipment and software to produce live 3D data from subsea environments, which was trialled at ORE Catapult’s renewable energy test facility in Blyth.

Rovco chief executive and founder, Brian Allen said “We are excited to be partnering with ORE Catapult again and ScottishPower Renewables to deliver cutting-edge live 3D vision technology to the subsea market."

The Innovate UK funding will enable our disruptive tech to be brought to market, bringing tangible benefits to the industry in terms of significant cost and time savings.

Securing this funding follows months of commercial testing and is testament to the strength of the technology and the unique offering we have developed at Rovco.

R&D is a key focus for us and over the next year we are planning on doubling our R&D team to ensure we continue to be at the forefront of new technology.

Our aim is to develop a system which delivers a step change in subsea survey, brings greater efficiencies to underwater projects, and enables full autonomy.

Source:osjonline