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A holistic approach to tankers
It is an accepted fact that the safety record of the tanker industry has never been better. Over-zealous will claim that this is a result of a barrage of new regulations, while a more likely explanation is the growing safety consciousness among tanker owner/operators. The most telling regulations so far has been penned on the basis of single accidents, like Erika and Prestige, rather than being proactive and work on relevant trends in accidents.
Regulators appear to be driven by the political need to legislate against accidents, rather than assessing the risk of accidents by asking the question: “How safe does society want shipping to be and what is the acceptable cost for the safety of maritime transport?”

The European Community (EC) has not addressed these questions, but tend to commission research to support a given conclusion as they did with emission controls. Not until now do they support research to look at the merit of double or single skin vessels. The project is designed to assess pollution risks from tankers and it is in broad terms based on probabilities, i.e. how much pollution can be expected from a potential tanker accident.
It has the appearance of a holistic approach to justify a single accident based legislation long after regulations have been implemented.
This is not an uncommon bureaucratic approach, particularly when new regulations are rushed through on the whims of the political masters. However, when you are dealing with the most efficient and consequently most economic means of global, regional and local transport, care must be taken to ensure that the fine balance between risk and reward is maintained. Although apparently unacceptable to the general public, accident will happen. People involved in the industry remain perplexed by this holistic approach, which in most cases is totally irrelevant to the shipping business.

What would have been relevant is to have a proactive approach by regulators, who so far has completely disregarded the safety record of the tanker industry. However, this is very probably wishful thinking. For we are dealing with regulators who stay aloof of the industry they are regulating with no hope of getting a rudimentary knowledge of the workings of this vital part of world economic development. It is truly unacceptable.

If the object of the exercise is to protect their political masters against the wrath of the general public the regulators are on the right course. But, they also deceive the general public by blaming the ship owners for dirty beaches and maimed birds, rather than explaining why they were so ill prepared when the accident happened. Nobody can legislate against accidents. These accidents will happen again, with single or double-hull vessels. To believe otherwise is to bury ones head in the sand. If regulators are that confident they should contemplate legislation against bad weather during holidays.
Surely, when you play God, it is not too much to ask.

//Petter Arentz