Feature 2 | CHEMICAL AND PRODUCT TANKERS
Loaded with high specific gravity cargo.
Ship heels away from damage. Full tanks.
substances onboard which could be vulnerable to a minor damage, that was a warning to the industry. We are not suggesting that more regulations are necessary, only that the present ones should be complied with”. For their part IPTA say that this was
a verbal submission at the IMO that was misquoted and that they will raise the issue at the next meeting in January. IPTA says that its representative actually said: “Due to their high degree of subdivision, chemical tankers normally have high margins of stability”.
“We are
concerned that to insist on PSC requiring vessels to demonstrate compliance with damage stability requirements
before leaving port will inevitably lead to vessel delays”
Neither is Mr Coley convinced by
IPTA’s view that: “There is widespread understanding within the industry that damage stability issues are dealt with at the design stage prior to the issuing of Certificates of Fitness”.
48 Within the MCA this view is seen as
an attempt to divert the requirements made on owners and operators to use ships appropriately from themselves and onto the designers. “Some people in the industry are shifting the responsibility for designing ships to be inherently safe onto the naval architects, but it is the operators that must load the ships in the appropriate manner and in accordance with the vessel’s approved loading manual,” said Mr Coley. The UK’s view is supported at the
IMO by the flag states of Germany, Denmark, Norway and Sweden and industry organisation Intertanko. In fact Germany already has requirements that are more stringent than the UK’s on this issue. Even so the compliance of chemical tankers was not seen as a pressing issue by IPTA. In the first instance the IPTA asked
to see evidence from the MCA and the other flag states that showed that these changes were necessary. This led to a questionnaire sent out in 2005 that showed similar results to inspections completed on more than 70 vessels that called at UK and European ports. Janet Strode said: “our concern is
that allegations have been made about the safety of the tanker fleet with no justification in the form of data or records having been provided. Our position from the outset on this issue has been that we - and indeed the relevant IMO committees - can only make sensible judgments on this on the basis of factual evidence.” This resulted in inspect ions,
conducted in 2009, through which the MCA discovered that around 45%
Heels towards damage. The Naval Architect November 2009
Heels away after damage.
Slack tanks.
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