INTERTANKO is involved with and present at numerous significant industry discussions on the key issues of the moment. These take place all over the world, making the Association’s involvement in the global tanker industry truly international - as the pictures on these pages show. In a representative week last October, INTERTANKO’s management was active representing the interests of the tanker owners and ensuring that their voice was heard as part of active discussions and negotiations in legal, technical, regulatory, operational, environmental, educational fora all over the world.

Kristian Fuglesang in the European Parliament

INTERTANKO’s Managing Director Dr Peter Swift, and General Counsel John Fawcett-Ellis, as well as Ken Marshall as Chairman of the Association’s Insurance and Legal Committee, were all working round the clock in London during the week of the Assembly of the International Oil Pollution Compensation (IOPC) Fund at IMO Headquarters. Up for discussion and final decision was whether the current regime comprising CLC, Fund and the Supplementary Fund should be revised - INTERTANKO and a number of states were opposing revision. Two powerful groups of nation states and industry interests had reached stand-off in their negotiations. A narrow majority against revision was achieved at the Assembly. The Third Intersessional Working Group was closed down and the issue of revision of the regime was removed from the Assembly’s agenda.

In the same week, Joe Angelo, Director of Regulatory Affairs and the Americas, was preparing for INTERTANKO’s filing of a remedy brief in North California, which sets out the ‘remedy’ that should be imposed as a result of the North Californian Court ruling that the Environmental Protection Agency’s longstanding exclusion from the Clean Water Act requirements of operational discharges from ships is not authorised by the CWA and therefore invalid. He was also was busy rescheduling meetings of the Latin American Panel and Miami Vetting Seminar that had had to be postponed at the last minute by Hurricane Wilma.

Dragos Rauta, Technical and Engineering Director, was in Heraklion in Crete, participating in a one day workshop on goal-based standards (gbs) organised with the participation of the IMO’s Maritime Safety Committee Chairman and the Chairman of the IMO Working Group on goal-based standards. Discussions between the forty or so participants focused on the advantages and disadvantages of the different approaches to formulating goal-based standards, and on the verification process for compliance. Dragos was representing INTERTANKO with a paper on the basic principles of gbs and verification and enforcement.

Peter Swift in Strasburg with EU Transport Commissioner Jacques Barrot and MEP Dirk Sterckx

Howard Snaith, Marine Director, was attending an intersessional meeting of the IMO’s Maritime Safety Committee Working Group on the subject of Long Range Identification and Tracking (LRIT). Discussions centered on the applicability of LRIT, the distance this should be monitored off the coast, and who should have access. Agreements reached included that the ship should not incur any charges for transmitting LRIT information, and that governments would pay the cost of the LRIT coordinator and for all LRIT information they request and receive.

Tim Wilkins, the Association’s Environment Manager, was speaking in London at a ballast water conference covering inter alia the implementation of the new IMO Ballast Water Guidelines. He focused on the role of the ship owner in complying with international requirements, but also stressed the importance of ensuring that the treatment developers and port state authorities also fulfil their responsibilities in implementing the Ballast Water Convention and its Guidelines.

Assistant Director Kristian Fuglesang was speaking at a seminar on Flag State Audit at the World Maritime University in Malmo, Sweden. The seminar, which placed a special emphasis on smaller maritime states, focused primarily on the IMO’s Flag State Auditing Scheme and many of the speakers, while admitting an initial hesitancy on this issue, have now concluded that this scheme should be given full support. Kristian was emphasising exactly what ship owners expect from flag states - Competent Administrations, Commitment, Consistency, Corruptionfree, Competitive, Capital-friendly, Casualty Investigation - suggesting that classification societies should be encouraged to be more selective in accepting to work for under-performing flag states.

John Fawcett-Ellis, Stephen Van Dyck, Peter Swift mixing with members and Korean tanker operators during Asian Regional Panel meeting in Seoul

Erik Ranheim, Research Manager, had been invited to China as the guest of Informa Group subsidiary IBC Asia Ltd to speak at the China Logistics Conference in Beijing. He made two presentations to senior people from China’s tanker companies and from the administration. The first was on tanker safety performance and the regulatory environment, while the second concentrated on the phase-out of single-hull tankers with an overview of the market where crude oil imports to China represent about 8% of total crude oil tanker trade.

Gunnar Knudsen, Ports and Terminals Manager, was in Japan, attending the annual meeting of the Federation of National Associations of Shipbrokers and Agents (FONASBA) in Tokyo. He delivered a report on the activities of INTERTANKO’s Documentary Committee, and also on various current issues including the Association’s Strategic Plan, the Poseidon Challenge, criminalisation and international law, training and its Terminal Vetting Database.

The combination of a small but professional, committed and energetic secretariat staff, backed by the expertise of members involved in an extensive structure of committees and regional panels, is truly powerful. The broad and deep impression that INTERTANKO leaves on the international shipping scene belies the relatively small size of the Association’s staff.

Dragos Rauta at the Dalian Maritime University