Editorial:

Fudging the real challenge

A fudged political approach could ultimately increase the risk to the marine environment.

It has been a testing time for the tanker industry in the past couple of months. The fallout after the “Prestige” incident is dealt with separately in a post mortem. The EU and some of the separate member states have had a field day by attacking the tanker industry, and thereby completely derailing all efforts to deal sensibly with the real challenge faced by all maritime countries. However, so far we have seen a very damaging tendency to circumvent and even fudge these challenges. Admittedly, in some instances attack may be deemed the best defence. The European countries certainly will have to defend and, we hope, explain their lack of compliance with a number of conventions and regulations concerning the protection of the marine environment.
Listening to and hearing the political statements in the aftermath of the tragic “Prestige” incident one would have thought that we suddenly had a new, threatening situation on our hands. The risk of trading older tankers is well documented and that is why single-hull tankers are being faced out from January next year through to 2015. An orderly renewal of the fleet is the only sensible thing to do, and this renewal would have happened without IMO’s phase-out. The fact that the EU wants to push the process forward to 2010 could cause unforeseen logistical problems in refining industry in many countries in Europe.
This issue carry a survey of fixed reception facilities in Northern Europe. These reception facilities take off tankers the stuff we do not want dumped in the ocean. But we count only 50, fixed reception facilities in the area, while there should have been at least 150 or more. Most of the fixed reception facilities are located at oil refineries or oil terminals, while on very few are located in other types of ports. Through Marpol 73/78 vessels are – quite rightly – required not to dump harmful substances into the sea. In too many cases dumping is the only option because the reception facilities required by Marpol are not in place.
One may well ask why not. Are the port states not required to provide such facilities? They are, but many have chosen to ignore their side of the bargain. Ports are also required to check bunker quality before vessels are bunkering, but they do not. Instead they feel that the vessels should sort out their own fuel and clean it to the required standard. If not the vessels could be fined for exhaust emission.
Perhaps it is symptomatic that the tanker industry’s view is not heard these days, except through the specialised press. Everyone else is on the bandwagon at the tanker owner’s expense.
Tanker owners are presented as the real culprit and they should clean up their act. We would suggest that the port states’ track record so far is miserable and this is why the “Prestige” incident was God-sent – except perhaps for those unhappy fishermen on the Spanish coast. Politicians are sometimes callus creatures, but the challenge of a cleaner sea is too important to use for political expediency.
What has been apparent so far is a lack of understanding of how the tanker industry works, why it is there and why none of the European countries could exist without it.
A rudimentary knowledge or even acknowledgement would represent a great improvement and could provide a basis on which to move forward with the view to limit the inherent risk of tanker transportation.
What we are more likely to see is a fudged approach, which might ultimately increase the risk of pollution and damage to the marine environment.

// Petter Arentz, Editor, Norway

Back to SSG 11, December 20

Latest update 18-10-2006 8:49

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