SPECIAL FEATURE
Safety, Environment & Security

The map above shows the Spitzbergen (Svalbard) area of the Barents Sea. The map was used in a paper given by Peter Johan Schei and Dr. R. Douglas Brubaker of the Fridtjof Nansen Insitute titled: “Developments in Environmental Protection – the Barents Sea and European Union Waters”.

Norway’s oil spill protection inadequate
Norway has a brilliant oil spill contingency setup, on paper, but when put to practical tests it has proven woefully inadequate. It is as if the planning staff at Norwegian Coastal Administration (NCA), Department for Emergency Response in Horten in Eastern Norway – and two smaller stations at Mongstad and Tromsø – assumes that nothing – hopefully – will happen.

Norway has had only one sizeable spill, the Ekofisk blowout in 1977. But the country’s 85,000 kilometres coastline is potentially very exposed.

Illustration: Tove Svensson

The stability of the Bourbon Dolphin questioned
When the anchor handling tug supply (AHTS) vessel the Bourbon Dolphin capsized and sank in 1,100 metres of water 85 nautical miles northwest of Shetland in April with the loss of eight lives, the Norwegian Maritime Directorate (NMD) prepared immediate measures to make sure this would “never happen again”. The measures listed below were perhaps a bit premature, but at an early stage, most experts doubted the capacity of the Bourbon Dolphin to handle the 330 tonnes anchor and chain.

Damage control in Esbjerg
“We only train ships’ crews in handling cargo when things have gone wrong. We teach them to handle things when fire has broken out, when ammonia is leaking from the cooling plants, when the gas tank is leaking under high pressure or when the passengers have to be evacuated from the ship. It is all done under one key word: damage control”.
   These words come from Stig Petersen, head of Falck Nutec A/S at Esbjerg. The training facility is the former Esbjerg Brandskole, which since its privatisation in the year 2000 has developed a comprehensive training programme meeting the demands of today’s crews on ships, drilling rigs and fixed platforms at sea.

A number of gas detectors can be connected to one central unit to monitor various closed compartments onboard a vessel.
Photo: Fredrik Davidsson

Fixed gas detection is preferred
In recent years eight seamen and dockworkers unnecessarily lost their lives in Swedish harbours due to undetected poisonous gases in cargo holds. These types of accidents happen all over the world.
Gas warning systems that could prevent these accidents can be fitted into new and old vessels at a low cost.

Intruder caught by security.
Photo: M/V Grande Argentina

Stowaways – keeping it simple
One perennial burden for crew, vessel owner and port authority alike, and one that doesn’t look like it will be going away in the near future, is that of stow­aways. Often unreported due to its frequent occurrence, and not as “sexy” a story in comparison to piracy or terrorist attacks, nonetheless the problem of stowaways is ongoing and can be just as hard hitting for companies in both legal and financial terms.

Prestigious environmental
award to WWL
Earlier this summer Wallenius Wilhelmsen Logistics (WWL) was awarded the prestigious Thor Heyerdahl Maritime Environmental Award. It was the fifth time the award was presented to a deserving candidate since it was launched in 1999.
WWL received the award for its commitment to improving the environmental standards in the shipping industry.

A candid conversation
with Mason and Polemis
When Tony Mason, Secretary General of International Chamber of Shipping, ICS, and International Shipping Federation, ISF, and Spyros M Polemis, the ICS Chairman and ISF President, were visiting Göteborg and the Swedish Shipowners’ Association, SSG hade a rare opportunity to meet them.

Hulda Winnes will become the first PhD specialised in the environmental field at Shipping and Marine technology at Chalmers University. Photo: Cecilia Österman

Measures for sustainable shipping
A research project at Shipping and Marine technology at Chalmers University of Technology aims at making shipping a sustainable transport option without compromising with the competitiveness of shipowners who act in environmental issues. Any activity that contributes to pollution also leads to costs for cleaning up, health care, et cetera, so called external costs. Estimates of these costs can be used as indicators on the importance of reducing the most costly pollutant and for choosing the most cost-effective measures from a societal perspective.

Creative solution? With a homemade lever the alarm can be acknowledged from across the control room. Photo: Monica Andersson

Involvement of engine department vital for safety
To manage and to find solutions is what I considered the great challenge and the fun part of being an engineer. Engineers manage and make the equipment work and no matter how bad the design is or how complicated and illogical the technical equipment is they find a solution.
The tasks which have to be performed in the engine control room have during the recent years changed as the use of computers increased. When a desk space has been prepared it is not unusual that the only available space is in a remote part of the control room. This entails sometimes the overview is lost and the alarm panel with its acknowledge button is out of reach for the engineer when work in front of the computer is performed.
But a creative engineer finds a solution; a slave panel connected to the alarm system is put on the desk, a couple of pulleys, a clapper, a piece of string connected to a lever takes care of the problem.