Attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels on merchant shipping in the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Aden, and the Arabian Sea continue apace. The Iran-backed Houthis are very well equipped with multiple attack drones and with anti-shipping cruise and ballistic missiles. These weapons are based...
This week, I want to look at how the shipping industry can overcome some of its biggest challenges – not greenhouse gases and climate change, nor sexism and homophobia, but the problems of abandoned crews, excessively long tours of duty, and the low safety standards that bedevil the wider maritime...
Impressive work by salvors and US engineers has restored full access to the Port of Baltimore, with the ill-fated containership Dali safely extracted from the wreckage of the bridge and alongside in the port she had left on March 26. By every standard, it has been a spectacular operation, which few...
It was a remark by an insurer, commenting on the probable of level of claims after the Baltimore bridge strike incident, that took my attention the other day. Insurers, said this expert, needed to be more aware of “low probability, high-cost claims” in the future. In an era of 24,000TEU...
O say can you see by the dawn’s early light A ship that blacked out, and a bridge no longer in sight (With apologies to Francis Scott Key) I have no desire to trivialise the recent events in Baltimore, because people died and that is a terrible tragedy for their families. We can only be […]
The post
One does not wish to provoke any sort of angry response from readers, but is it not time that the definition of piracy was updated? It was not that long ago that such was a crime punishable by ferocious penalties, even under quite liberal regimes, which were repealed only after somebody pointed out...
The Electric Thames project, a collaboration between UK Power Networks, LCP Delta, and Marine Zero, is assessing the viability of using electric vessels to feed stored electricity back into London’s energy network. Using a principle similar to night storage heaters, battery-powered vessels on the...
Offshore is one of the industries with the biggest risk profiles in the world. When bad things happen in offshore, people die, often there are explosions and sinkings, fires and oil spills, and the environment can be badly polluted, killing seabirds, fish, dolphins and coral, and inflicting...
The recent bridge collapse incident in Baltimore in the US state of Maryland was a tragedy that I believe could and should have been avoided. The bridge was built in 1977 and as can be seen from media footage, it can hardly be described as robust although it was probably adequate in the 1970s. Dali...
In an industry is awash with cash and record profits, it is tragic to see five people confirmed dead in an accident on a Perenco platform offshore Gabon, and one other worker still missing, presumed also killed, as per the most recent update. Last Wednesday, there was a fire on the Becuna platform...