Today tankers are not a priority at IMO
The evolution of the tanker shipping safety regime is currently in the midst of a quiet patch. In contrast to the 1990s and early 2000s, when oil pollution incidents like Exxon Valdez, Braer, Erika and Prestige had the various parties responsible for tanker shipping falling over themselves to get their house in order and tighten up the provisions governing tanker design, construction, operation and maintenance, today tankers are not a priority at IMO.
They are not a priority for two reasons. First, the trying and complex issues of piracy and curbing ship emissions of harmful atmospheric pollutants are currently monopolising session time at the organisation. Second, and most importantly, the tanker industry managed to get its house in order as a result of those earlier incidents to the extent that the volume of oil entering the sea due to tanker accidents is now at historic lows.
The key to achieving the startling improvements in the tanker safety record over the past decade has been the attitude of tanker operators and charterers. While these two principals appreciated that a new raft of regulations was coming as a result of the now-infamous accidents, they also knew that tougher rules alone were not enough.
Such was the public furore over these high-profile tanker spills that tanker operators and charterers concluded at the outset that they had to lead from the front. In order to halt a continued onslaught of new regulations and to ensure that they remained in business, they had to revitalise their risk management procedures and to tighten them to such an extent that there was no hope of a sub-standard ship slipping through.
The central plank in this improved risk management regime is tanker vetting. The major charterers realised that in order to safeguard their exposure to risk they would need to implement a technical risk assessment programme for the ships they hire that is free from commercial influence; that considers all candidate vessels in a uniform and equitable way; and that is subject to continuous review. Responsible tanker operators immediately bought into this grand plan as it would create the level playing field they had long sought.
The end result is that tankers today are the most well-documented and most-inspected ships in the commercial fleet. The managers of these fleets and their systems are also under close scrutiny.
In their vetting programmes oil major charterers make use of a wide range of data, including that from the industry’s central Ship Inspection Report (SIRE) and Chemical Distribution Institute (CDI) databases, port state control inspection programmes, terminal and voyage reports, casualty information, industry publications, websites and their own in-house ship and office inspections.
The nature of tanker shipping, with its preponderance of spot and short-term fixtures, means that charterers work their vetting regimes intensely and place great reliance upon them. Large oil companies carry out literally thousands of single voyage assessments each year. Such assessments are made not only when they are chartering a ship themselves but also when the voyage involves a group terminal or one of their cargoes is being transported by a third party.
Tanker operators too can make use of ship vetting programmes as part of their own quality assurance programmes. Responsible operators utilise vetting/inspection feedback to improve and measure their own management systems under the Tanker Management and Self Assessment (TMSA) programme. After assessing their safety management systems against listed performance indicators, ship operators can use TMSA to develop an improvement plan. This can then be implemented in stages in the drive for excellence in safety and environmental performance.
So far so good.
Nevertheless, despite the high standards that have been achieved with the tanker industry’s revitalised vetting regime, worrying signs of a potential reversal in safety performance have begun to emerge in recent years. Tanker casualties have continued to run at the rate of about 200 per annum since the mid-2000s. Although the consequences of these incidents have been relatively minor in nature, the majority, worryingly, involve collisions and groundings. Furthermore, there is no indication of any imminent decrease in the casualty rate.
Industry watchers believe that the rapid expansion of the tanker fleet over the past decade, along with the requirement for a much larger pool of seafarers, have been key factors in the persisting casualty figures. The concern now is that the current depressed tanker shipping market will reinforce the trend and lead to an increase in the casualty rate as commercial matters take precedence over safety.
In the spirit of continuous improvement and the need to not only contain the current casualty rate but reverse it, tanker charterers and operators are putting their thinking caps on once again in the drive to maintain a viable, industry-led safety regime.
In reviewing the causes of recent casualties the omnipresent spectre of human error is unavoidable. The high percentage of collisions and groundings points to bridge team management inadequacies, while a noted increase in mechanical failures indicates a lack of maintenance and, possibly, a lack of understanding of maintenance needs.
Digging deeper, tanker charterers and operators have noticed weaknesses in the existing controls governing tanker manning. Most notably, there are loopholes in the regime which allow the crewing of a vessel with a complement of senior officers with an aggregate seagoing experience of rather limited duration.
Also, questions have been raised about the competency requirements for junior officers assigned officer of the watch responsibilities and the role played by simulator refresher courses for such officers.
Tanker charterer vetting regimes start with industry standards like SIRE and CDI and are then customised to meet the particular requirements of individual companies. The issue of adequate aggregate sea time for a ship’s senior officer complement has been recognised as an industry-wide concern and guidance on increased levels of sea time was included in a recent update of the SIRE regime
As a result of the analysis of recent casualties charterers across the board are also reviewing the importance of the navigation audits within their own vetting regimes, particularly with regard to the competencies which make up an officer matrix; training requirements; and criteria for officer selection, evaluation and promotion. Other navigational issues under scrutiny include passage planning; the supply and use of charts; and the crew/pilot relationship.
The tanker industry’s study of the casualties involving their vessels in recent years has found that they mirror the trend in global casualties across the shipping spectrum. Tanker charterers and operators are determined to utilise their finely tuned vetting regime to reduce their casualty rate at the earliest opportunity and show the way forward for the rest of the shipping industry. They can’t afford not to.
Source: BIMCO, Mike Corkhill
