Opinions & Analysis

It used to be assumed that provided the demands of the ship permitted, shore leave was, more or less, a “human right” of seafarers.

At times in the year running up to the start of the IMO 2020 global 0.5% sulphur cap on marine fuel it felt like a constant refrain of “the sky is falling, the sky is falling” from the shipping industry.

New interpretations of how US cabotage law the Jones Act applies the offshore sector by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) are causing concerns for domestic offshore vessel owners.

With the implementation of International Maritime Organization Low Sulphur Regulation (or IMO 2020), concerns keep on growing amid recently announced bunker adjustment factors by carriers and the apparently far-from-enough low-sulphur output from...

It’s been one of the most hotly debated questions of the last 18 – 24 months in shipping – whether or not to invest in scrubbers to comply with the IMO 2020 global low sulphur cap for marine fuel.

Let’s offer our support, loud and clear, to Captain Andrzej Lasota, late of the bulker UBC Savannah, currently incarcerated in a Mexican prison and a victim of the most disgraceful behaviour by the authorities of that country.

Any navigator with more than a few month’s experience knows that when the wind is forward of the beam, it affects the speed of the ship. So if you wish to maintain the speed in such conditions, you need to use a bit more fuel.

With the advent of IMO 2020, a set of new proposed regulations from the US Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) have the potential to sow seeds of confusion in the supply chains for fuel to be used on deepsea ships.

A discussion on the perennial topic - the $200bn question of where is the capital for shipping needs – turned into a lively sparring match between top executives at last week’s Marine Money Ship Finance Forum in New York.

The push towards ESG (Environment, Social and Governance) in investing sees a split between “Vice” and “Virtue”. In a big eyeopener for the industry Peter Hermanrud, chief strategist at Sparebank 1 Markets, links shipping stocks to “Vice Shares”...