In light of the coronavirus outbreak, Russia has reportedly announced that every vessel arriving at the Black Sea ports of Novorossiisk and Yuzhnaya Ozereyevka from Iran, Italy and South Korea has to be disinfected, a document seen by Reuters showed.
The Common maritime agenda for the Black Sea has officially launched on 17 February 2020 in Sofia, where representatives from seven Black Sea countries – Bulgaria, Georgia, the Republic of Moldova, Romania, Russia, Turkey, and Ukraine– convened for their first steering group meeting.
APM Terminals Poti, in west coast of Georgia, revealed plans for the creation of a deep-water port to the country. The plans require an investment of over 250 million USD of private capital for phase 1 and a substantial amount for phase 2 in an extensive development of the port infrastructure.
EMSA launched a project on maritime safety, maritime security and protection of the marine environment between the EU MS and Non-EU countries bordering the Black and Caspian Sea. EMSA has implemented the Black and Caspian Sea Regions Project for technical assistance bringing together national, European and international stakeholders with the aim to raise the safety, security and protection of marine environment standards.
As MACN reports, corruption is one of the most challenging risks for any business, and doing business in Ukraine is no exception. In Ukraine, the shipping industry faces challenges such as in connection with documentation handling and controls of on board practices regarding waste disposal, and ballast water discharge among others.
A fire on the Tanzanian-flagged LPG tanker ‘Maestro’ in the Black Sea has stopped after one-and-a-half month. The fire erupted on the two Tanzanian-flagged LPG tankers ‘Venice’ and ‘Maestro’, while they were transferring fuel in the Kerch Strait, Russia’s territorial waters, Black Sea.
South Korea’s Posco Daewoo agreed with Ukraine’s logistics company OREXIM to jointly develop and manage a grain terminal, placed in the Ukrainian Black Sea port of Mykolayiv, Ukraine. The terminal, which is due to start operations in July, has a grain loading capacity of 2.5 million tonnes per year.
Oil tankers cause a long queue trying to pass the Turkish straits of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles. The oil tankers loaded about 41 million barrels of oil, in their majority of Russian and Kazakh from the Black Sea ports. Overall, 55 vessels were waiting, including 21 Suezmax class tankers and 26 Aframax class vessels.
Maestro and Candy tanker vessels are still on fire and they stopped drifting, according to TASS. After the explosion of the LPG tanker on January 22, both vessels caught fire, resulting to 10 crewmembers dead and 10 missing and presumed dead in the Kerch Strait, Black Sea.
Oil tankers that export Kazakh and Russian crude from ports in the Black Sea, are competing on spiraling delays when they voyage through Turkey’s most important straits. To this result, the delivery of millions of bbl of supplies on the Mediterranean Sea and past it, are being stalled.
