- As NGOs Ask Brazil to Stop Beaching Ships in South Asia
Maersk Supply Service, a part of Danish shipping and offshore energy conglomerate Maersk Group, has entered into agreements with two yards to postpone delivery of a total of nine newbuildings.
The vessels in question include five anchor handling vessels, under construction at Kleven Yard in Norway, and four subsea support vessels, being built by China’s Cosco Dalian shipyard.
“Both MSS and the yards consider this the best possible solution given the current market situation,” Maersk Supply Service said.
The first Starfish anchor handling vessel, Maersk Master, was delivered in March this year, while vessel number two will be delivered in late June.
The next three Starfish ships from Kleven will be delivered in 2018, and the latest in the beginning of 2019. The four Stingray subsea support vessels at Dalian COSCO, none of which have been delivered to date, will all be slightly postponed with contract delivery dates planned from summer 2017 to spring 2018.
“It is our priority to optimize the utilization options for our new-buildings, and we are confident that the new delivery schedule will benefit the competitive edge of Maersk Supply Service,” Steen S. Karstensen, MSS CEO, said.
In the meantime, the NGOs and trade unions have criticized the shipbreaking practices of Transpetro, a part of Brazil-based Petrobras, which sent more than twenty vessels to the beaches of India and Pakistan in the last five years.
In an official letter sent on June 2, 2017 to Transpetro, Severino Almeida, president of Brazilian CONTTMAF trade union federation and its member SINDMAR, expressed his serious concerns about “Petrobras’ poor end-of-life fleet management.”
NGO Shipbreaking Platform said that, according to maritime databases, at least six more units owned by Petrobras have already been sold for demolition but are still in Brazilian territorial waters. Four drill platforms were bought in a public auction by the cash-buyer Rota Shipping who exclusively delivers to Turkish yards, while the product tanker LOBATO and the liquefied petroleum gas carrier GUAPORE were sold to Indian breakers.
Petrobras is not the only Brazilian company involved in dirty scrapping practices. The Platform said that, in the last two years, the Brazilian mining giant Vale has also sold five ships to shipbreaking beaches in Bangladesh and Pakistan.
A committee coordinated by the Ministry of Labour and Employment, with the presence of the Brazilian Navy and Petrobras, is now considering the possibility to include ship recycling in the scope of national regulation NR 34, which sets environmental and safety requirements for ship building and offshore constructions, including repair activities.
World Maritime News
