SHIPPING

Estonian delegation visits Ports Authority

A delegation from Estonia made a courtesy call at Sir Lanka Ports Authority on February 15, 2013.

The 22 member delegation was led by Vaino Reinart, the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Estonia.

The delegation received at the Ministry of Port and Highways, later held initial discussions with Minister of Port and Highways (Projects) Rohitha Abeygunawardane and also made a special inspection tour of the Colombo Port Expansion Project.

The delegates was impressed by the presentation of the latest Port City Development Project to commenced soon as and expressed by Dr. Priyath B. Wickrama, Chairman of Sri Lanka Ports Authority (SLPA), said Estonia would extend their fullest assistance in all possible ways for the on going developmental processes in the maritime sector Sri Lanka.

The delegates also expressed confidence on developing more cruise sevices between the destinations to promote the industry of tourism in Sri lanka.

Honourary Consul of the Republic of Estonia, Dudley Thambinayagam, Anuradha Jayawickrama, Additional Secretery of the Ministry of Ports and Highways (Port), Capt. Nihal Keppetipola, Managing Director of SLPA, Norman Weerarathne, Additional Managing Director of SLPA, D. T. S. Gunasekara, Director (Technical) of SLPA, Shirani Wanniarachchi, Director (Finance) of SLPA, D.W.Athapattu, Director (Logistics), Susantha Abesiriwardhane, Project Director (CPEP) and Chief Engineer (Planning and Development), Upul Jayatissa, Chief Manager (Marketing and BD), Nilanthini Arudpragasan, Assistant Director (Economic Affairs) of the Ministry of External Affairs and Hemantha Jayawarna, Protocol Officer of the Ministry of External affairs were also present on the occasion.

Colombo Dockyard selected for drydocking repairs

The container carrier Safmarine Ngami, called in for her first special survey and drydocking repairs to Colombo on January 18. Colombo Dockyard was selected for the excellent repairs carried out on MV Maersk Ronneby, also owned by the same owners during February 2012, successfully.

The Colombo Dockyard was the best option for the owners/managers, given the strategic location placing the vessel on the trading route, the vessel discharged her containers in the Port of Colombo and shifted directly into drydocks for her lay-up repairs.

Colombo’s flexibility was evident, when the vessel was accommodated in drydock on the same day of completion of cargo, one day ahead of the committed date. The repairs were completed on schedule , meeting owner’s requirements.

During this drydocking call, the work package covered repairs in all sectors the main job blasting and painting of hull, as owners were highly concerned of the vessel’s speed and fuel consumption, which highly depended on the vessel’s hull condition. As per job specification full blasting (SA 2.5) on flat bottom and vertical bottom areas were carried out.

The hull treatment team played a key role during this project and the initial paint coat was totally removed to apply the new scheme of paints.

The owner’s interests were looked after by Anand Chaudhari, Fleet Superintendent, Suresh Verma, Superintendent and Clyde Peres, Fleet Group Manager, Technical Operations.

The project team was headed by Ship Manager, Samitha Silva, who was supported by all production departments to re-deliver the vessel on schedule.

The owners were happy with the excellent facilities at their disposal, coupled with the quality workmanship, professional approach to meet the owner requirements were highly appreciated.

The container carrier was accommodated in the 125,000 DWT drydock for her repair requirements and sailed out direct from the drydocks to the loading berth in the port of Colombo.

The repairs were carried out meeting the Class American Bureau of Shipping society requirements.

Prudential Shipping Lines (PTE) Ltd. handled the local husbanding work smoothly.

Emergence of Colombo as a hub for container traffic, places Colombo Dockyard as a serious candidate for many leading container carriers touching Colombo, for her repair requirements.

The maritime industry in Sri Lanka has seen rejuvenated activity with the recent developments and further increase in activity should be visible with the starting of the operation of Colombo South port by mid 2013.

Given these positive developments, the main shipping lines are looking at Colombo/ Sri Lanka as a serious destination for their drydocking repairs and marine requirements.

Yemeni court jails 17 Somali pirates

A Yemeni court sentenced 16 Somali to 10 years in jail and another to five years behind bars for acts of piracy in the Gulf of Aden, a judicial source said.

The court in the southeastern coastal city of Mukalla convicted the group of hijacking a Yemeni fishing boat along with it crew, the judicial source told AFP.

“This is injustice. We shall appeal the verdict,” shouted one of the defendants from the dock, said a witness.

The defendants who were arrested by the Yemeni navy went on trial in August 2011.

Heavily armed pirates using high-powered speedboats have operated in the Gulf of Aden for several years, preying on ships and at times holding them for weeks before releasing them for large ransoms paid by governments or shipowners.

But the number of attacks has diminished since an international deployment of warships to patrol waters off the Horn of Africa.

AFP

Three foreign sailors kidnapped off Nigeria: shipping firm

Pirates have attacked a British-flagged cargo ship off Nigeria and kidnapped one Romanian and two Russian crew members in the latest such incident to hit the region, a statement said Friday.

“Carisbrooke Shipping Ltd. regrets to report that their 2008 built, UK flag, ... general cargo ship 'MV Esther C' was boarded by pirates on the evening of February 7 whilst in international waters south in the Gulf of Guinea,” a statement issued by MTI Network on behalf of the operators said.

“Having stolen personal possessions, the pirates departed the vessel taking three crew members as hostage,” it added.

MTI later specified that those kidnapped included two Russians and a Romanian, while the nine other crew members were Filipino. The attack occurred off Nigeria's coast in line with the Cameroon border, some 85 miles (135 kilometres) offshore, it said.

“The safety and well-being of these seafarers is the company's absolute priority and all possible steps to secure their return are being taken,” it said.

“The nine crew members remaining on board the vessel are reported to be safe and well.” A spokesman for Nigeria's navy said he could not immediately comment on the attack. The Gulf of Guinea off west Africa has seen a spate of pirate attacks in recent years, particularly involving the theft of fuel cargo for sale on the black market, but also kidnappings and robberies.

Such attacks have long been a problem off Nigeria, but have recently spread to other countries in the region.

Militants in Nigeria's oil-producing Niger Delta region carried out scores of such kidnappings before a 2009 amnesty deal led to a sharp decline in unrest, though incidents continue.

Hostages are usually released unharmed after the payment of ransoms. Poverty and crime remain widespread even though Nigeria is Africa's largest oil producer. Five Indian crew members of an oil tanker who were kidnapped in December after heavily armed pirates stormed their vessel off Nigeria's coast were released last month. Medallion Marine, a Mumbai-based shipping firm, said the hostages were freed in good health, but did not disclose whether a ransom had been paid, or whether Nigeria's security forces played any role in securing their release.

AFP

Pakistan port integral to China maritime expansion

China's acquisition of a strategic port in Pakistan is the latest addition to its drive to secure energy and maritime routes and gives it a potential naval base in the Arabian Sea, unsettling India.

The Pakistani cabinet on January 30 approved the transfer of Gwadar port, a commercial failure cut off from the national road network, from Singapore's PSA International to the state-owned China Overseas Port Holdings Limited.

The Pakistanis pitched the deal as an energy and trade corridor that would connect China to the Arabian Sea and Strait of Hormuz, a gateway for a third of the world's traded oil, overland through an expanded Karakoram Highway.

Experts say it would slash thousands of kilometres (miles) off the distance oil and gas imports from Africa and the Middle East have to be transported to reach China, making Gwadar a potentially vital link in its supply chain.

China paid about 75 percent of the initial $250 million used to build the port, but in 2007 PSA International won a 40-year lease with then-ruler Pervez Musharraf who was reportedly unwilling to upset Washington by giving it to the Chinese.

Although it may take up to a year for the deal to be signed, Gwadar would be the most westerly in a string of Chinese-funded ports encircling its big regional rival, India, which was quick to express concern over the impending transfer.

In Nepal, China is building a $14 million “dry port” at Larcha, near the Tibet border, along with five other ports and and is upgrading transport links with an eye to the huge Indian market.

In Bangladesh, China is one of four countries, including India, Japan and the United States, interested in building a $5-billion deep-sea port at Sonadia island in the Bay of Bengal, according to the shipping ministry.

Sri Lanka in June 2012 opened a new $450 million deep-sea port at Hambantota, close to the vital east-west sea route used by around 300 ships a day, built with Chinese loans and construction expertise.

Although China has no equity stake in Hambantota, they have taken up an 85 percent slice of Colombo International Container Terminals Limited, which is building a new container port adjoining the existing Colombo harbour. Beijing is also a key backer of a port and energy pipeline in Myanmar that will transport gas pumped offshore and oil shipped from Africa and the Middle East to China's Yunnan province, due to be finished by the end of May. The ports were dubbed China's “string of pearls” -- or potential naval bases similar to those of the United States -- in a 2004 report for the Pentagon.

But some analysts now pour cold water on suggestions that Beijing is scouting for naval bases in the Indian Ocean.

Andrew Small, an expert on China-Pakistan relations, believes that most of Beijing's concerns can be resolved through cooperation, as seen in anti-piracy exercises in the Gulf of Aden that last year included drills with the US.

“In the near-to-medium term, it appears that China's interests in this part of the world lean far more towards developing capacities to deal with threats to sea lanes of communication, Chinese citizens overseas and so on,” he told AFP.

“Plenty of Indian naval strategists are highly sceptical of the likelihood of many of the locations... actually being used as military facilities by China.” But Small does believe that Gwadar is the most mostly likely port to be developed by China for use by the Pakistan Navy, and potentially their own.

“Pakistan is probably the only government where the level of trust between the two militaries is high enough to make that a completely reliable prospect,” he said.

When asked about Gwadar, Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said Beijing supports “jointly undertaken matters which are conducive to Chinese-Pakistani friendship and to the development and prosperity of Pakistan”.

Other Pakistani experts suggest that Islamabad is more likely to give the Chinese navy access to its existing naval bases of Karachi or Qasim.

“China can always use those. So they do not have to build another naval base at this stage,” said Hamayoun Khan, who teaches at the National Defence University in Islamabad.Fazul-ul-Rehman, former director of the China Studies Centre at the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad, dismisses the prospect of China going to war in the Indian Ocean and calls Indian concern “propaganda”.

But he says China has become more cautious about big investment projects in Pakistan due to security concerns. Taliban, sectarian and separatist violence blight Baluchistan, the southwestern province around Gwadar.

In 2004, three Chinese engineers helping to build Gwadar were killed in a car bombing. The same year, two Chinese engineers working on a hydroelectric dam project in South Waziristan were kidnapped, and one of them died. As a result, Rehman says there is a long way to go on China-Pakistan economic cooperation and emphasises that Gwadar will be a long-term project with Beijing looking for future alternatives to shipping routes for its oil and gas imports.

AFP

Crippled US ship comes ashore after hellish cruise

Exhausted passengers who spent four days adrift in the Gulf of Mexico with no power and few working restrooms streamed off a stricken Carnival cruise ship late Thursday.

What was supposed to have been a pleasurable excursion turned into a hellish ordeal after an engine room fire on Sunday left the ship without the power needed to operate air conditioners, prepare meals or flush toilets.

At around 0300 GMT Friday, the crippled ship limped into the port in Mobile, Alabama, after being towed here by a flotilla of tugboats -- ending a hot and miserable ordeal for some 4,000 people on board.

Families cheered from dockside and waved to relatives who stood on the deck and lined the balconies of the darkened ocean liner, which has been likened to a hulking skyscraper adrift for days on the open water.

“It is great to be on ground,” Rob Kenny told CNN moments after disembarking, saying he looked forward to being reunited with his wife and children in Dallas. Another passenger knelt and kissed the dock.

Brooklyn Burgess said she broke down when she was reunited with her father.

“It was just so good to see him, after being on that boat for that long and not knowing when or how we were getting back,” she said.

Carnival CEO Gerry Cahill told reporters shortly after the cruise ship Triumph's arrival that the first order of business would be to apologize to the passengers for their ordeal.

“I would like to reiterate the apology that I made earlier, because I know that the conditions on board were very poor and it was very difficult, and I want to apologize again for subjecting the guests to that,” he said.

“We pride ourselves in providing our guests with a great vacation experience, and clearly we failed in this particular case.” A flotilla of tugboats pulled the massive ocean liner into port, in an operation that took longer than anticipated because of a delay when the towline for one of the boats snapped and had to be replaced.

Some of the passengers on the ship operated by Florida-based Carnival Cruise Lines signaled news media helicopters with “SOS” messages scrawled on sheets, desperate to flee the stench and mess that they had endured for four days.

Several travelers waved homemade flags fashioned from bed sheets to express their distress. One sign read: “S.O.S.” Another: “We R Not OK.” At one point, a group lay on the sundeck and spelled out the word “help” with their own bodies.

Other passengers reached by telephone described a stomach-churning ordeal and sent photographs of the nightmare voyage, showing mattresses dragged out of stifling rooms and lined up on deck.

Jamie Baker, a passenger from Texas, told US media that pipes had burst, the toilet system was backed up and cabins were flooded with dirty water.

Baker complained that passengers had to wait in line for up to four hours for meals she described as “basically bread” or, in her case, skimpy sandwiches of tomato and mayonnaise.

“Sanitation is a huge problem. Food is very sporadic,” she said.

Carnival officials said that even after Triumph docks, it could be another several hours before all of the passengers disembark, and some of the travelers face long bus or car rides back to Texas or other far-off destinations.

Terry Thornton, senior vice president of marketing at Carnival, blamed the slow pace of the disembarkation on the fact that, with power still cut, there was just one functioning elevator aboard the disabled ship.

The Triumph had originally been scheduled to return to port early Monday after a weekend stop in Cozumel in Mexico before the engine room blaze that left the vessel without power.

The Miami-based operator said cruises on the ship, which left the port of Galveston, Texas on February 7, have been halted until at least mid-April.

Carnival has also offered financial compensation and discounted future travel for the distressed passengers.

Thornton said advance teams of custom officials were already onboard the ship to speed up the process of clearing passengers.

AFP