The crew change crisis that has been plaguing the maritime industry for more than a year and a half is raging on and only getting worse, data from 10 of the world's top ship managers suggests.The number of seafarers onboard vessels beyond the expiry of their contract has continued rising from 7.2% to 8.
Hundreds of turtles have washed ashore after a ship caught fire and sank off the west coast of Sri Lanka in June in the country's worst-ever marine disaster, a court in the capital Colombo heard this week.A fire erupted on the Singapore-registered MV X-Press Pearl on May 20, carrying 1,486 containers, including 25 tonnes of nitric acid along with other chemicals and cosmetics.
New legislation introduced in the wake of the fatal Seacor Power tragedy would require commercial vessel owners to provide timely notifications to crew members’ families throughout search and rescue operations.The Vessel Response Plan Improvement Act was introduced by Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) after the 234-foot lift boat capsized in the Gulf of Mexico with 19 crewmembers on board last month.
Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) said one of its containerships has had to pause its China-U.S. voyage after a fuel problem gave rise to engine problems on board the 366-meter vessel.The Panamanian-flagged containership MSC Ariane had to stop at sea on April 2 due to an engine issue caused by "bad quality of fuel", MSC said.
It was an odd legislative journey, but ultimately one with a happy ending. That’s one way to sum up the rather tortuous process that led to the passage of the Water Resources Development Act of 2020 (WRDA). For the first time WRDA (usually reauthorized every two years) was not enacted as its own legislative bill.
At least 39 migrants died when two boats sank off Tunisia on Tuesday as they tried to cross the Mediterranean to the Italian island of Lampedusa, the Tunisian defense ministry said.The coast guard rescued 165 others, and searches for more survivors are still ongoing off the coast of Sfax, ministry spokesman Mohamed Zekri said. All the dead migrants were from sub-Saharan Africa, he added.
China passed a law on Friday that for the first time explicitly allows its coast guard to fire on foreign vessels, a move that could make the contested waters around China more choppy.China has maritime sovereignty disputes with Japan in the East China Sea and with several Southeast Asian countries in the South China Sea.
The United States on Tuesday imposed sanctions on a ship involved in building the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to take Russian natural gas to Europe, as the Trump administration sought to raise pressure on the project on its last full day in office.The U.S. Treasury Department said it imposed the sanctions on the Russian pipe-laying ship "Fortuna" and its owner, KVT-RUS
In early October, Waterways Council, Inc. (WCI) reported in its newsletter Capitol Currents that the future of the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) of 2020 hung in the balance, with many unknowns for its chances of being signed into law during the Lame Duck session of Congress that just concluded in late December.
The United States is urging European allies and private companies to halt work that could help build the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline and is preparing wider sanctions on the Russian project in coming weeks, senior Trump administration officials said on Wednesday.The outgoing Trump administration is readying a fresh round of congressionally mandated sanctions “in the very near future” that
The U.S. Senate on Friday passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2021, a massive $741 billion defense bill setting policy for the Pentagon. Importantly for the U.S. offshore and maritime industries, the bill includes an amendment ensuring full enforcement of the Jones Act and other federal laws in offshore wind development.
Estonia, Sweden and Finland will look into fresh evidence on the sinking of the ferry Estonia, which went down 26 years ago on Monday with the loss of 852 lives in Europe’s worst peacetime maritime disaster since World War Two.The roll-on roll-off ferry, carrying 803 passengers and 186 crew, sank on a stormy Baltic Sea shortly after midnight on Sept. 28, 1994.