Dredged material guidelines adopted by IMO - Maritime Journal

Posted - October 24, 2013 - Maritime Journal

The 35th Consultative Meeting of the Parties of the London Convention 1972 and London Protocol have adopted Guidelines for Assessment of Dredged Material.

Success came during the final day of the Meeting of the Parties at the International Maritime Organization headquarters in London last week.
These Guidelines are to be used for assessment of dredged material that is proposed to be placed at sea to ensure that the placement does not result in unacceptable adverse impacts to the ecological resources of the sea or present an unacceptable risk to humans.
The World Organisation of Dredging Associations (WODA) has an official Non-Governmental Observer (NGO) status at the London Convention and its Protocol. On behalf of the three dredging associations making up WODA; the Central Dredging Association (CEDA), the Eastern Dredging Association (EADA), and the Western Dredging Association (WEDA), CEDA undertakes this work and actively participates in meetings and relevant working groups to provide independent expert advice to help shape policy development. CEDA’s overarching aim is to ensure that any legislation pertaining to dredging and disposal activities and maritime construction works is based on the sound technical and scientific knowledge, takes account of best practice, and is ultimately workable.
CEDA, along with a number of other organisations, has worked to ensure that dredged material is treated as a special case and has been instrumental in changing the image of dredged material, recognising that it consists mainly of natural sediments and only a small proportion of the total volume dredged annually is contaminated. As a result what was previously described as dredged ‘spoil’ is now known as dredged ‘material’, a term now embedded in the conventions.
The London Convention and Protocol are important in setting basic requirements for the management of dredged material placement at sea and produce guidelines which provide the context within which assessment of the suitability of dredged material placement is carried out within contracting countries.
The London Convention and Protocol adopted the Dredged Material Assessment Framework (DMAF) in 1995, this was replaced by the Specific Guidelines for the Assessment of Dredged Material in 2000. The new Guidelines represent a comprehensive review to update the Guidelines with new science and to provide them in a user friendly format.
Through its observer status, WODA/CEDA contributed significantly to drawing up the original assessment frameworks and guidelines and has continued to provide expert input into their revision.
Before a permit for placement of dredged material at sea can be issued, an assessment must be conducted, including evaluation of alternatives to ocean placement and characterization of the dredged material in terms of physical, chemical, and potential biological toxicity. The Guidelines require that the characteristics of the dredged material be compared to an action list to determine acceptability for open water placement in the ocean, which is followed by careful considerations of placement site characteristics and an assessment of the potential effects of placement at that site. A permit is only to be issued if any effects are below acceptable thresholds. The Guidelines specify that monitoring programs should be put in place to ensure that permit conditions and predictions of acceptable impacts are on target.
Dr. Craig Vogt (Craig Vogt Inc, USA), Chairman of the WEDA Environment Commission represented WODA/CEDA at the recent Consultative Meeting.
The Guidelines apply to the 90 countries that are members of the London Convention and 43 countries that are members of the London Protocol (a number of countries are members of both). The Guidelines will be available on the IMO website soon at www.imo.org as well as on the CEDA and WEDA websites, www.dredging.org and www.westerndredging.org respectively.

Post to be found at:
http://www.maritimejournal.com/news101/dredging/dredged-material-guidelines-adopted-by-imo

International Conference Unanimous That Arctic Code is Needed - MarineLinl.com

Posted - October 23, 2013 - MarineLink.com

The Russian Maritime Register of Shipping (RS) recently hosted a St. Petersburg international conference 'Arctic Shipping and Offshore Activities: Responding to Safety and Environmental Challenges' . The conference was attended by key figures with interests in Arctic develoment, including the Secretary-General of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) Mr Koji Sekimizu. A synopsis of the proceedings follows:
The international maritime community is focusing on the Northern Sea Route (NSR) as a measure to reduce the costs as well as time of cargo transportation, the latter resulting in reduction of CO2 emissions. At the same time the safety of a ship in the harsh ice conditions and protection of the fragile Arctic ecosystems remain a major challenge to the industry.

During the conference the experts discussed possible solutions from technical as well as regulatory standpoints. The yards shared their experience in the innovative approach to ice class ships’ design while the representatives of maritime administrations touched upon various issues concerning the Polar Code. Also widely debated was the ice retreat theory bringing to light different approaches to ice retreat forecast, which all in all confirms the number of the high ice class ships and icebreakers required is continuously increasing.

Notably, participants unanimously agreed on the need for the development of the Polar Code.  According to the IMO Secretary-General, the Polar Code may be implemented by IMO in 2017. He emphasized that IMO needs good scientific and technical base to complete the code and therefore, expressed his gratitude to RS for dedicating the conference to technical discussions of Arctic shipping development among the leading experts in design, construction and operation of sea transport.




Photo CCL

The leading yards presented state-of-the-art solutions in icebreaking ships’ hull design and propulsion. Their presentations covered oblique icebreaker’s design, a pioneer LNG-fuelled icebreaker for Finland, possibilities for double acting feature of the future Yamal LNG Arctic gas carriers and other innovations. The shipping companies operating in the Arctic shared practical experience of transit navigation along the NSR.

The conference was organised as part of the RS 100-anniversary celebration programme. “Most of the RS 100 year long history has been devoted to promoting the safety of navigation in harsh ice conditions including the Northern Sea Route,” said RS CEO Sergey Sedov.

In addition to the IMO Sec. General, were Deputy Minister of Transport of the Russian Federation Mr Victor Olerskiy, Executive Director of the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) Mr Markku Mylly, senior officials from international associations (ICS, BIMCO), Maritime Administrations (China, Denmark, Germany, Norway),  Russian oil majors (Gazprom, Rosneft), ship owners (Sovkomflot, Maersk), design bureaus, scientific research institutes, shipbuilding yards, insurance companies,  as well as other representatives of the shipping industry.

Post to be found at:
http://www.marinelink.com/news/international-conference360153.aspx

IMO Head Calls for Quick Review of Low-Sulfur Fuel - Ship & Bunker

Posted - October 22, 2013 - Ship & Bunker

Koji Sekimizu, secretary-general of the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) has told Russian market specialists PortNews IAA he believes a study of the availability of low-sulfur fuel to meet demand in 2020 should be brought forward.
"I have suggested that the study of availability of low sulphur fuel should be accelerated," he said.
"I'm sure that next year the Marine Environment Protection Committee will discuss this matter seriously and I hope that we will carry out important meaningful study for availability of low sulphur fuel."
Sekimizu said that "sometime into 2015" the IMO will evaluate the availability of the fuel for international shipping and the capacity of the oil industry to provide it by 2020.
"So we need to evaluate total amount of energy required for shipping industry by 2020  and then we'll take a decision of what should be done to meet low sulphur regulation by 2020," he said.
The review of fuel availability must be done by 2018, according to the IMO's Annex VI, but industry players have been calling for an earlier evaluation to give shipping and bunker companies time to prepare for a 2020 change in fuel regulations.
Starting January 1, 2020, limits on the sulfur content of marine fuel not already covered by an existing emissions control area (ECA) are set to drop from 3.50 percent to 0.50 percent globally.
Effective January 1, 2015 sulfur limits within the Baltic and the North Sea ECAs, as well as the North American ECA, will drop to 0.10 percent, but Sekimizu says he does not foresee any fuel availability issues for that deadline.
"As far as I understand, that could be achieved," he said.

UK Shipping Minister Stephen Hammond has called for the review of the 2020 limit to start at the beginning of 2015, an idea echoed by the International Bunker Industry Association (IBIA).

Post to be found at:
http://shipandbunker.com/news/world/378868-imo-head-calls-for-quick-review-of-low-sulfur-fuel

BOEM Completes Environmental Review for Oil, Gas Sales in Eastern GoM - Maritime Executive

Posted - October 22, 2013 -  Maritime Executive

As part of President Obama's all-of-the-above energy strategy to continue to expand safe and responsible domestic energy production, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) has completed the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) for two proposed oil and gas lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico's Eastern Planning Area.

"This analysis evaluates baseline conditions and potential environmental impacts of oil and natural gas leasing, exploration, development and production in the Eastern Planning Area, and updates information already published," said BOEM Director Tommy P. Beaudreau. "This document is an important part of the decision-making process regarding future operations, as well as leasing."

Lease Sales 225 and 226, scheduled for 2014 and 2016, are part of the Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program: 2012-2017 (Five Year Program). The Five Year Program makes all areas with the highest-known resource potential available for oil and gas leasing in order to create jobs and further reduce America's dependence on foreign oil.

The Five Year Program schedules twelve potential lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico, with annual area wide sales of all available, unleased acreage in the Western and Central Planning Areas, as has been the typical practice. Additionally, since a portion of the Eastern Planning Area (EPA) was made available for leasing under the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act of 2006, Lease Sales 225 and 226 are scheduled there. The remainder of the Eastern Planning Area is under Congressional moratorium.

This FEIS analyzes potential impacts on sensitive coastal environments, offshore marine resources, and socioeconomic resources both onshore and offshore. BOEM also held public hearings along the Gulf Coast and solicited comments from interested citizens and organizations that were used to prepare the FEIS.

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The Eastern Planning Area 225/226 FEIS is available for review online at http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/public-inspection/index.html.

To download or view the FEIS, visit the following link at BOEM's website at http://www.boem.gov/nepaprocess/.

For additional information, go to www.boem.gov/gom-sales/ on the BOEM website.

Post to be found at:
http://www.maritime-executive.com/article/BOEM-Completes-Environmental-Review-for-Oil-Gas-Sales-in-Eastern-GoM-2013-10-22/

Hyundai Takes Advantage of Arctic Sea Route - Maritime Executive

Posted - October 23, 2013 - Maritime Executive

South Korea has taken delivery of its first cargo shipped by a Korean firm via the Northern Sea route, as the government looks to increase use of the new shipping route opened up through the Arctic.

A vessel chartered by Hyundai Glovis took 35 days to deliver a 44,000 ton cargo of naphtha from Port Ust Luga in Russia to Gwangyan Port, about 350 km (220 miles) south of Seoul, arriving late Monday, the Korean Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries said on Tuesday.

Cargoes of coal, diesel and gas have made the trip through the new route opened by climate change, which offers a shorter journey between Asia and Russia, although shippers face high insurance costs, slow going and strict environmental rules.

The ministry said the government intended to strengthen cooperation with Russia and other countries around the Arctic area, and would support Korean shipping companies to help them tap into the Northern Sea route.

"The available period of operation at the Arctic Sea and the size of cargo volume are increasing and many countries are pushing ahead with resource exploration in the Arctic area," the ministry said.

The route would be available for trips to Korea for 4-5 months a year, although Seoul currently had difficulties securing cargoes and had a lack of ice breakers.

The naphtha cargo, delivered for South Korean petrochemical producer YNCC, had been expected to take 30 days, but was delayed by bad weather, while Russian ice breakers were on call at ice-bound areas.

Asia is structurally short of naphtha and routinely takes from Europe, including Russia.

Rosneft and Novatek regularly ship naphtha to Asia from Nakhodka and Ust-Luga respectively, where the latter has a term agreement with YNCC.

Naphtha from Tuapse is also shipped to Asia when demand for the light fuel falls in Europe. 

Copyright Reuters 2013.

Post to be found at:
http://www.maritime-executive.com/article/Hyundai-Takes-Advantage-of-Arctic-Sea-Route-2013-10-22/

High-viscosity PIB carried by ship to be subject to stringent discharge requirements - Hellenic Shipping News Worldwide

Posted - October 23, 2013 -  Hellenic Shipping News Worldwide

IMO’s  Working Group on the Evaluation of Safety and Pollution Hazards of Chemicals (ESPH 19), meeting at IMO Headquarters from 21 to 25 October, has agreed to classify high-viscosity PIB (Polyisobutylene) as category X  for carriage by ship, thereby prohibiting the discharge of cargo residues into the sea. The categorization and carriage requirements for high-viscosity PIB will be included in the annual MEPC.2/Circular on the Provisional categorization of liquid substances, usually issued by IMO on 17 December each year and will be put forward for inclusion in the next edition of the  International Code for the Construction and Equipment of Ships carrying Dangerous Chemicals in Bulk (IBC Code)  which lists chemicals and their hazards and gives both the ship type required to carry that product as well as the environmental hazard rating. Amendments to the IBC Code are put forward on an annual basis so the next amendments would be considered during 2014, for inclusion in the IBC Code with an effective implementation date of 1 July 2016.

Category X under the International Convention for Prevention of Pollution from Ships Annex II Regulations for the control of pollution by noxious liquid substances in bulk includes noxious liquid substances which, if discharged into the sea from tank cleaning or deballasting operations, are deemed to present a major hazard to either marine resources or human health and, therefore, justify the prohibition of the discharge into the marine environment.

For substances under category X, a tank from which a substance in Category X has been unloaded, must be prewashed before the ship leaves the port of unloading.  The resulting residues must be discharged to a reception facility until the concentration of the substance in the effluent is at or below 0.1% by weight.

MARPOL Annex II lists four categories for noxious liquid substances carried in bulk:

• Category X:  present a major hazard to either marine resources or human health and, therefore, justify the prohibition of the discharge into the marine environment;

• Category Y: present a hazard to either marine resources or human health or cause harm to amenities or other legitimate uses of the sea and therefore justify a limitation on the quality and quantity of the discharge into the marine environment;

• Category Z: present a minor hazard to either marine resources or human health and therefore justify less stringent restrictions on the quality and quantity of the discharge into the marine environment; and

• Other Substances: considered to present no harm to marine resources, human health, amenities or other legitimate uses of the sea when discharged into the sea from tank cleaning of deballasting operations.

Previously, PIB was classified as category Y material but there was no differentiation between high or low viscosity grades. Low-viscosity PIB will remain as a category Y product.
Source: IMO

Post to be found at:
http://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/News.aspx?ElementId=4c580613-d76c-4f3b-90c6-eeb1ab967a3e&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily

The ocean is broken - Newcastle Herald

Posted - October 18, 2013 - By GREG RAY - Newcastle Herald

IT was the silence that made this voyage different from all of those before it.
Not the absence of sound, exactly.
The wind still whipped the sails and whistled in the rigging. The waves still sloshed against the fibreglass hull.
And there were plenty of other noises: muffled thuds and bumps and scrapes as the boat knocked against pieces of debris.
What was missing was the cries of the seabirds which, on all previous similar voyages, had surrounded the boat.
The birds were missing because the fish were missing.
Exactly 10 years before, when Newcastle yachtsman Ivan Macfadyen had sailed exactly the same course from Melbourne to Osaka, all he'd had to do to catch a fish from the ocean between Brisbane and Japan was throw out a baited line.
"There was not one of the 28 days on that portion of the trip when we didn't catch a good-sized fish to cook up and eat with some rice," Macfadyen recalled.
But this time, on that whole long leg of sea journey, the total catch was two.
No fish. No birds. Hardly a sign of life at all.
"In years gone by I'd gotten used to all the birds and their noises," he said.
"They'd be following the boat, sometimes resting on the mast before taking off again. You'd see flocks of them wheeling over the surface of the sea in the distance, feeding on pilchards."
But in March and April this year, only silence and desolation surrounded his boat, Funnel Web, as it sped across the surface of a haunted ocean.
North of the equator, up above New Guinea, the ocean-racers saw a big fishing boat working a reef in the distance.
"All day it was there, trawling back and forth. It was a big ship, like a mother-ship," he said.
And all night it worked too, under bright floodlights. And in the morning Macfadyen was awoken by his crewman calling out, urgently, that the ship had launched a speedboat.
"Obviously I was worried. We were unarmed and pirates are a real worry in those waters. I thought, if these guys had weapons then we were in deep trouble."
But they weren't pirates, not in the conventional sense, at least. The speedboat came alongside and the Melanesian men aboard offered gifts of fruit and jars of jam and preserves.
"And they gave us five big sugar-bags full of fish," he said.
"They were good, big fish, of all kinds. Some were fresh, but others had obviously been in the sun for a while.
"We told them there was no way we could possibly use all those fish. There were just two of us, with no real place to store or keep them. They just shrugged and told us to tip them overboard. That's what they would have done with them anyway, they said.
"They told us that his was just a small fraction of one day's by-catch. That they were only interested in tuna and to them, everything else was rubbish. It was all killed, all dumped. They just trawled that reef day and night and stripped it of every living thing."
Macfadyen felt sick to his heart. That was one fishing boat among countless more working unseen beyond the horizon, many of them doing exactly the same thing.
No wonder the sea was dead. No wonder his baited lines caught nothing. There was nothing to catch.
If that sounds depressing, it only got worse.
The next leg of the long voyage was from Osaka to San Francisco and for most of that trip the desolation was tinged with nauseous horror and a degree of fear.
"After we left Japan, it felt as if the ocean itself was dead," Macfadyen said.
"We hardly saw any living things. We saw one whale, sort of rolling helplessly on the surface with what looked like a big tumour on its head. It was pretty sickening.
"I've done a lot of miles on the ocean in my life and I'm used to seeing turtles, dolphins, sharks and big flurries of feeding birds. But this time, for 3000 nautical miles there was nothing alive to be seen."
In place of the missing life was garbage in astounding volumes.
"Part of it was the aftermath of the tsunami that hit Japan a couple of years ago. The wave came in over the land, picked up an unbelievable load of stuff and carried it out to sea. And it's still out there, everywhere you look."
Ivan's brother, Glenn, who boarded at Hawaii for the run into the United States, marvelled at the "thousands on thousands" of yellow plastic buoys. The huge tangles of synthetic rope, fishing lines and nets. Pieces of polystyrene foam by the million. And slicks of oil and petrol, everywhere.
Countless hundreds of wooden power poles are out there, snapped off by the killer wave and still trailing their wires in the middle of the sea.
"In years gone by, when you were becalmed by lack of wind, you'd just start your engine and motor on," Ivan said.
Not this time.
"In a lot of places we couldn't start our motor for fear of entangling the propeller in the mass of pieces of rope and cable. That's an unheard of situation, out in the ocean.
"If we did decide to motor we couldn't do it at night, only in the daytime with a lookout on the bow, watching for rubbish.
"On the bow, in the waters above Hawaii, you could see right down into the depths. I could see that the debris isn't just on the surface, it's all the way down. And it's all sizes, from a soft-drink bottle to pieces the size of a big car or truck.
"We saw a factory chimney sticking out of the water, with some kind of boiler thing still attached below the surface. We saw a big container-type thing, just rolling over and over on the waves.
"We were weaving around these pieces of debris. It was like sailing through a garbage tip.
"Below decks you were constantly hearing things hitting against the hull, and you were constantly afraid of hitting something really big. As it was, the hull was scratched and dented all over the place from bits and pieces we never saw."
Plastic was ubiquitous. Bottles, bags and every kind of throwaway domestic item you can imagine, from broken chairs to dustpans, toys and utensils.
And something else. The boat's vivid yellow paint job, never faded by sun or sea in years gone past, reacted with something in the water off Japan, losing its sheen in a strange and unprecedented way.
BACK in Newcastle, Ivan Macfadyen is still coming to terms with the shock and horror of the voyage.
"The ocean is broken," he said, shaking his head in stunned disbelief.
Recognising the problem is vast, and that no organisations or governments appear to have a particular interest in doing anything about it, Macfadyen is looking for ideas.
He plans to lobby government ministers, hoping they might help.
More immediately, he will approach the organisers of Australia's major ocean races, trying to enlist yachties into an international scheme that uses volunteer yachtsmen to monitor debris and marine life.
Macfadyen signed up to this scheme while he was in the US, responding to an approach by US academics who asked yachties to fill in daily survey forms and collect samples for radiation testing - a significant concern in the wake of the tsunami and consequent nuclear power station failure in Japan.
"I asked them why don't we push for a fleet to go and clean up the mess," he said.
"But they said they'd calculated that the environmental damage from burning the fuel to do that job would be worse than just leaving the debris there."

Post to be found at:
http://www.theherald.com.au/story/1848433/the-ocean-is-broken/

Putin Builds North Korea Rail to Circumvent Suez Canal - Bloomberg

Posted - October 15, 2013 - By Ekaterina Shatalova & Nicholas Brautlecht - Bloomberg 

Vladimir Putin is inching closer to his goal of turning Russia into a major transit route for trade between eastern Asia and Europe by prying open North Korea, a nuclear-capable dictatorship isolated for half a century.

Russia last month completed the first land link that North Korea’s Stalinist regime has allowed to the outside world since 2003. Running between Khasan in Russia’s southeastern corner and North Korea’s rebuilt port of Rajin, the 54-kilometer rail link is part of a project President Putin is pushing that would reunite the railway systems of the two Koreas and tie them to the Trans-Siberian Railway.

“Shipping companies face higher costs to secure their cargo,” said Thomas Straubhaar, director of the Hamburg Institute of International Economics, in an e-mailed response to questions. “The rail route will get attractive if Russia increases efforts to ensure a secure and reliable transport on the long stretch between Asia and Europe. Customers don’t want their Porsche to be stolen along the way.”

OAO Mechel (MTLR), Russia’s biggest supplier of steel-making coal, will be among the customers in the first stage of the North Korea project, sending shipments eastward to Asian consumers, according to Moscow-based Russian Railways. The Rajin facility also can be refitted to move Asian goods westward to Europe. Mechel’s press service in Moscow declined to comment.

Faster by Rail

Shipments to and from western Europe and Rajin will be delivered in just 14 days, compared with 45 days by ship, OAO Russian Railways Chief Executive Officer Vladimir Yakunin told reporters in North Korea Sept. 22.

Getting the two Koreas to work together on the railway and a long-stalled plan to build a pipeline to supply both Koreas with Russian natural gas is fraught with financial and political hurdles, said Fyodor Lukyanov, head of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy research group in Moscow. They stem from North Korea’s nuclear weapons program and lingering animosity from the 1950-1953 Korean War.

“Russia’s position is to get North Korea involved in profitable projects to make them realize that cooperation is better than isolation,” Lukyanov said by phone from the Russian capital.

Nuclear Developments

North Korea is under United Nations sanctions for its atomic program. Six-nation talks that were designed to remove nuclear weapons from the peninsula were abandoned in 2009, when it detonated another device. The Koreas are technically still at war, having ended their military conflict with an armistice rather than a formal peace treaty. In 2003, the two countries opened a highway through their demilitarized zone, one of the most heavily armed borders in the world.

“The Korean project is strategically important for Russian Railways,” said Igor Golubev, an analyst at OAO Promsvyazbank in Moscow. “But it shouldn’t expect fast returns on its investment because at this point I doubt global companies are willing to risk sending cargo via North Korea.”

While Russian Railways says time savings will make up for the higher costs compared with the Suez route, the services train operators already run between China and Europe are too costly, said Michael Tasto, an economist at the German Institute of Shipping Economics and Logistics. They thus lack the capacity to take major market share from container-shipping companies such as A.P. Moeller-Maersk A/S. (MAERSKB)

Niche Product?

“The rail route is faster but more expensive, so it will probably become a niche product,” Tasto said by phone Oct. 7. “Cargo trains are not mass-transportation vehicles like container ships.”

None of that has stopped Russian Railways and its partners in the European Union and China from developing new links between the world’s two largest exporters, touting the routes as alternatives far removed from the political instability in Egypt and the wider Middle East.

Far East Land Bridge, a Russian Railways venture, opened a new service between Suzhou in eastern China and Warsaw on Sept. 30. The first shipment, of “electronic and technology items,” will make the 7,600-kilometer journey in 14 days, linking with the Trans-Siberian via Mongolia and reaching Poland through Belarus, the Vienna-based company said in a statement Oct. 7.

Direct Link

Russian Railways and its counterparts in China and Germany in August introduced a direct link between Hamburg and Zhengzhou in north-central China that takes as little as 15 days and travels through Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus and Poland.

“Our goal is a daily service,” Ruediger Grube, CEO of Deutsche Bahn AG, said after 51 shipping containers of goods from China arrived in Hamburg by train Aug. 2.

The Russian and German rail operators opened an 11,000-kilometer service between Chongqing in southwest China and the German transport hub of Duisburg via Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus and Poland in 2011. The travel time varies from 16 days to 23 days, according DB Schenker, Deutsche Bahn’s cargo unit.

Major customers include Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, which ships auto parts west to factories in China, and Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP), which transports computers the other way.

While the Chongqing line is focused on shipments between Europe and China, the Korean link caters to traffic between Europe and the rest of eastern Asia, Russian Railways said. China, Japan and South Korea together account for about a quarter of the global economy.

Korean Support

Putin has urged South Korean President Park Geun Hye, who assumed office in February, to work with North Korea on relinking their rail networks, most recently last month at the Group of 20 summit in St. Petersburg. Park publicly affirmed her commitment to reunifying the Trans-Korean when she met with officials in Busan, South Korea’s largest port, in July.

Putin plans to make his third state visit to Seoul for talks with Park in mid-November, Chosun Ilbo reported Oct. 1, without saying where it got the information. Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, declined to comment on the report.

North and South Korea resumed cross-border rail service in 2007 for the first time in 56 years amid a mood of detente, though North Korea closed it down after 18 months and hasn’t reopened it since.

“I have personally dreamed of a railway that starts at Busan and reaches Europe via Russia,” Park told Putin at the summit, according to the website of her presidential Blue House office. “It is an important agenda item for the new government to strengthen Eurasia cooperation.”

Post to be found at: 
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-15/putin-builds-north-korea-rail-to-circumvent-suez-canal.html

IMO Sec-Gen Discusses Arctic Shipping IMO Secretary-General Koji Sekimizu: “In the forthcoming five years, the Northern Sea Route will be the main shipping lane for navigation in the Arctic.” - Maritime Executive

Posted - October 18, 2013 - Interviewed by Vitaly Chernov and Nadezhda Malysheva - Maritime Executive
 

PortNews (PN): Mr. Secretary-General, what do you think about the development prospects of the Northern Sea Route and about the safety level of navigation there?

Sekimizu: The matter of safety is of utmost importance for the International Maritime Organization. Now it is a reality for us to expect that the volume of traffic over the Northern Sea Route will be increased dramatically over the coming years. It is important that international standard will be established at IMO and will be applied for every vessel which may go through the Northern Sea Route. If you ensure the application of IMO standard, safety level will be maintained. I’m convinced that IMO regulation will ensure the maintenance of the safety level for the navigation over the Northern Sea Route.

PN: Do you expect increasing of shipping activities at the Northern Sea Route?

Sekimizu: I enjoyed the opportunity to navigate over the Northern Sea Route this summer and I was really impressed with the situation there: the waterway is free of ice as far as 90%.The ice-covered area is just only 10% of 1700 miles. That clearly indicates that in summer time it is possible to allow a large number of vessels going through the Northern Sea Route. If we ensure that icebreaker support will be provided then not only vessels carrying the minerals and oil from Russia to Asian countries but also the traffic from Asia to Europe will be increased.

PN: What are the prospects for the shipping at the North-West Passage along the Canada coast?

Sekimizu: If you compare the future possibilities of the Northern Sea Route with the North-West Route of navigation in the Arctic area, obviously through the costal areas of Canada: there is a big difference. Based on the information that ice at the Canadian coast is still accumulated over the area, it is difficult to navigate even in summer time. Also the Canadian coast is much more complicated compared with the Northern Sea Route. The element of national regulation from the Canada is also to be maintained. There will be a number of different points. As far as I see the forthcoming five years, the Northern Sea Route will be the main shipping lane for navigation and passage.

PN: The Polar Code is being developed by IMO with the participation of Russian experts. How far is the experience of our country taken into consideration in this work? When can we expect the new document and what status will it have?

Sekimizu: The experts of the Russian Federation are already fully attending the IMO meetings and providing information based on the long years of experience in navigation in Arctic waters. We need to share the experience of Russian people over the navigation in the Northern Sea Route. I’m sure that at IMO meetings the technical information to be provided from the Russian Federation will be appreciated and that will become a basis for discussion at IMO.

I really hope that we can settle all preparatory work for the Polar Code by the next year so that we can adopt the Polar Code by the end of the next year. The new Code will come into force in 2016 or in early 2017. This is a possible and realistic target and I’m sure we can achieve that.

This is going to be a mandatory code to be implemented at IMO conventions, one is SOLAS convention and another one is MARPOL convention. We are going to amend both convention and make the Code mandatory.

PN: Getting off the Arctic subject in favor of southern shipping routes, we have to acknowledge that the threat of pirate attacks remains off the coast of Somalia in the Indian Ocean. How long do you think this region should be patrolled by international warships? What other anti-piracy measures could be efficient in your opinion?

Sekimizu: We have been working very closely with the Navies provided from the European countries and other regions as well. And also the Russian Federation has provided naval forces.

Thanks to strong defense by Navies, and also shipping industry has taken its own preventative measures to be implemented onboard the commercial vessels, last year we encountered a serious reduction of piracy and that good direction and good situation continued so far. I really hope that current situation will continue so that gradually piracy off the coast of Somalia will disappear.

But at this moment it is important not to become un-present and we need to maintain the strong level of defense for international shipping. We need to ensure the Navy will be operating for some time now, otherwise the pirates may return back to do that wrong doing. So we need to maintain the naval forces for a while.

I really hope that our collaborative and corporative work will ease the situation with the Somalia piracy.

While I’m touching upon the piracy off the coast of Somalia in the Indian Ocean, still the piracy activity off the western coast of Africa is very high and we are paying a lot of attention for anti-piracy measures there. IMO encourages the African countries to establish a good mechanism of cooperation for anti-piracy measures similar to that we have established in other regions. We really hope that African countries will take up strong measures to impose and IMO will be ready to help them handle the piracy off the coast of Africa. 

PN: What do you think about new environmental initiatives aimed at introduction of stricter requirements for shipping in the Baltic Sea? Don’t you think it can result in more pollution of the environment if cargo shifts to automobile transport from marine transport with growing cost of service?

Sekimizu: Application of the stringent requirements for NOx is currently at the discussion at IMO.

We have taken into account difficulties encountered particularly in Russia and the next meeting of the Marine Environment Protection Committee in spring next year will discuss this matter. I hope that we will take into account the difficulties encountered in the Russian Federation and then reflect it into some sort of a decision to be made at the next MEPC so that we generally maintain the IMO’s standards, but at the same time the interest of EU people will be also taken into account. It is up to farther discussion and at this stage I cannot pre-act what will be the final debate.

As for sulphur, we have adopted MARPOL Convention amendment. There are two elements involved: by 2015 within the emission control area (ECA, including the Baltic and the North Seas – ed.) we have to apply stringent sulphur regulations. As far as I understand, that could be achieved. The other target is the following: by 2020 we will impose stringent global requirement to reduce sulphur emission from ships, which should be applied all over the world. That may require a careful evaluation regarding weather oil industry could provide ample amount of low sulphur fuel by that time. I have suggested that the study of availability of low sulphur fuel should be accelerated. I’m sure that next year the Marine Environment Protection Committee will discuss this matter seriously and I hope that we will carry out important meaningful study for availability of low sulphur fuel. Sometime into 2015 we will evaluate, for example, how much clear energy will be made available for international shipping by 2020 and if the oil industry will be available to provide the required amount of low sulphur fuel. So we need to evaluate total amount of energy required for shipping industry by 2020  and then we’ll take a decision of what  should be applied to meet low sulphur regulation by 2020.

PN: How can regional/national legislative initiatives (like that of NOx emission initiative) influence the international process of regulating?

Sekimizu: When it comes to stringent requirements for a regional level, like emission control area, that has been debated at IMO already and I take into account all implications to the shipping industry as well as to the countries within the ECA. That has been done. It is a global process of discussion.  In 2008, they came to a conclusion so now it is in the process of implementation. Then, if we encounter any serious problem, the established standard should be modified, and this is a kind of activity of IMO. Until we come to the farther consideration I cannot predict what will be the outcome of the discussion.

Obviously, the shipping is international, therefore any regional measures will make an impact on global shipping. IMO applied this way of a sort of special requirements on top of global requirements.

In the history of environmental regulation, a good example is MARPOL convention. As a global regulation it has a special area concept, where stringent requirements are applied on special areas. Currently we have adopted 14 particularly sensitive sea areas where we will apply stringent requirements.

PN: In this case, the decision was made by IMO globally, everybody participated in the decision making, not only the costal states.

Sekimizu: Yes, it is a global decision. For example, let’s take any requirement for air pollution. Stringent requirements are applied for the Baltic Sea and the Baltic Sea is surrounded with Russia, Estonia and all those littoral states like Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Germany... They proposed the stringent requirement, then that proposal was debated on a global level, and IMO involving all IMO member governments agreed to accept the proposal from the regional countries. This is the only way.

Post to be found at:
http://www.maritime-executive.com/article/IMO-SecGen-Discusses-Arctic-Shipping-2013-10-18/

Another good resource

New paper: “Barriers to energy efficiency in short sea shipping” by hannjohn

Our paper Barriers to energy efficiency in short sea shipping - an action research case study was just accepted for publication in the Journal of Cleaner Production. An early version was presented at the International Research Conference on Short Sea Shipping in Estoril, 2012. It is the first case study in a series of articles detailing the results of this research project. A link to the article will be provided as soon as it is published.


Go to:
http://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-cleaner-production