1 June 2011 Overseas Report

Dredging firm to pay US105,000 fine for violation of ocean dumping regulations
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the US says A Salem, Mass. dredging company has agreed to pay a penalty of US$105,000 to settle EPA claims that it improperly disposed of dredged sediments. The EPA asserted that Burnham Associates violated the Marine Protection, Research and Sanctuaries Act, commonly known as the Ocean Dumping Act, as part of a dredging project in Hingham Harbour. Burnham, through the actions of its subcontracted towing company, on at least 50 occasions dumped dredged sediments in locations that were in some cases up to one nautical mile from the designated coordinates within the prescribed ocean dumping zone. The Massachusetts Bay Disposal Site is a circular area two nautical miles in diameter about 18 nautical miles from the entrance to Boston Harbour. These misdumps deprive regulators of the ability to monitor the sediments once they have been disposed of and so determine migration and erosion rates. In addition, regulators are unable to monitor impacts on the marine environment and, particularly in this case, to construct a boundary of a containment cell that could potentially limit the spread of future dredged material disposed of in the Massachusetts Bay Disposal Site. The Ocean Dumping Act regulates the dumping of all types of materials into ocean waters. In acting on this enforcement case, EPA coordinated closely with the US Army Corps of Engineers, the permitting authority for ocean dumping projects involving dredged materials. Late last year another dredging company, Cashman Dredging & Marine Contracting of Quincy, Mass, agreed to pay US$50,000 for ocean dumping violations while dredging the Porter and Crane rivers in Danvers. The payment included a US$12,500 cash penalty and US$37,500 paid for installing in Beverly Harbour low impact moorings to prevent turbidity and allow eelgrass habitat to recover. According to regulators, Cashman performed a short dump of sediment in Beverly Harbour, well outside of the prescribed ocean dumping zone. The EPA also alleged that Cashman overdredged in some areas and took unauthorized sediments for disposal in the Massachusetts Bay Disposal Site.

Somali pirate: we are not murderers - we just attack ships It had taken five days to arrange this meeting. Somali pirates are hard to track down, It had taken five days to arrange this meeting. Somali pirates are hard to track down, constantly moving around and changing phone numbers. Days earlier, frustrated and eager to begin interviewing, I had naively suggested approaching some suspected pirates on the streets of Garowe, a rapidly expanding city at the heart of the pirates tribal homeland. Habitually munching on narcotic leaves of khat, they are easy enough to spot, their gleaming Toyota four-wheel-drives slicing paths around beaten-up wheelbarrows and pushcarts. My Somali hosts laughed, explaining that to do so would invite kidnapping, robbery, or, at the very least, unwanted surveillance. In Somalia, everything is done through connections clan, family or friend and these networks are expansive and interminable. Warsame, my guide and interpreter, had been on and off the phone for the better part of a week, attempting to coax his personal network into producing Abdullahi Boyah Abshir. Eventually it responded, and Boyah presented himself. I was being taken to a mutually agreed meeting place in an ageing white station wagon, cruising out of Garowe on the citys sole paved road. My two UN-trained bodyguards, Said and Abdirashid, perched attentively in the back seat and in the rear-view mirror was a sleek new Land Cruiser, a shining symbol of the recent money pouring into Garowe. It carried Boyah, Warsame and another fixer. Other than our two vehicles, the road was empty, stretching unencumbered through a stony desert dotted with greenish shrubs. The thought that I was being taken to be executed in a deserted field the unfortunate product of too many Las Vegas mob movies rattled around in my head for a few seconds.

We arrived at our destination, a virtually abandoned roadside farm 15 kilometres outside Garowe. Boyah had recently contracted tuberculosis, and Warsame insisted that we meet him in an open space. As we stepped out of our respective vehicles, I caught my first glimpse of Boyah. He looked to be in his early 40s, immensely tall and with an air of menace about him; the brief, calculating glance with which he scanned me left the distinct impression that he was capable of chatting amiably or robbing me with the same equanimity. He was wearing a maawis, a traditional sarong-like robe of a clan elder, and an imaamad, a decorative shawl, was slung over his left shoulder. Boyah turned immediately and loped down a dirt path. Threading his way through the mishmash of tomato plants and lemon trees that constituted this eclectic farm, he wove back and forth, like a bird looking for a roosting spot. Finally, he settled on a site in a cool, shady clearing, where an overhead thatching of branches had created an almost cave-like atmosphere. Other than the farms owner and his wife, no one was remotely close by, yet the bodyguards took up positions at either end of the clearing with an amusing military officiousness. I greeted him with the standard Salaam laykum, and was not surprised when he and those around him responded with startled laughter before quickly offering the formulaic response: laykum salaam. Somalis were routinely astonished when I demonstrated the slightest knowledge of their culture or language even a phrase that they shared with the entire Islamic world. As I forced out my first question through Warsame, I hesitated to use the word pirate to describe Boyah. The closest Somali translation of the word is burcad badeed, which literally means ocean robber, a political statement I was anxious to avoid. In much the same way that revolutionaries straddle the semantic fence separating freedom fighters from terrorists, Boyah and his brothers-in-arms did not like to call themselves pirates in their native tongue.In an alliterative display of defiance, they referred to themselves as badaadinta badah, saviours of the sea, a term that is most often translated in the English-speaking media as coastguard. Boyah joked that he was the chief of the coastguard, a title he invoked with pride. To him, his actions had been in protection of his sea, the native waters he had known his whole life; his hijackings, a legitimate form of taxation levied in absentia on behalf of a defunct government that he represented in spirit, if not in law. His story was typical of many coastal dwellers who had turned to piracy since the onset of the civil war almost 20 years ago. In 1994, he still worked as an artisanal lobster diver in Eyl one of the best, he said. Since then, the lobster population off the coast of Eyl has been devastated by foreign fishing fleets mostly Chinese, Taiwanese and Korean ships, Boyah said. Using steel-pronged drag fishing nets, these foreign trawlers did not bother with nimble explorations of the reefs: they uprooted them, netting the future livelihood of the nearby coastal people along with the days catch. Today, according to Boyah, there are no more lobsters to be found in the waters off Eyl. So he began to fish a different species, lashing out at those who could out-compete him on the ocean floor, but who were no match for him on its surface. From 1995 to 1997, Boyah and others captured three foreign fishing vessels, keeping the catch and ransoming the crew. By 1997, the foreign fishing fleets had become more challenging prey, entering into protection contracts with local warlords that made armed guards and anti-aircraft guns regular fixtures on the decks of their ships. So, like all successful hunters, Boyah and his men adapted to their changing environment, and began going after commercial shipping vessels. They soon attracted others to their cause. Boyah was a pioneer, one local journalist told me. He showed the others the real potential of piracy.

There are about 500 pirates operating around Eyl. I am their chairman, he said, claiming to head up a central committee composed of the bosses of 35 other groups. The position of chairman, however, did not imbue Boyah with the autocratic powers of a traditional gang leader. Rather, Eyls pirate groups functioned as a kind of loose confederation, in which Boyah was a key organiser, recruiter, financier and mission commander. But would-be applicants for the position of pirate (Eyl division) had to come to him, he claimed. Boyahs sole criteria for a recruit were that he own a gun and be a hero, and accept death qualities that grace the CVs of many desperate local youth. Turnover in Boyahs core group was low; when I asked if his men ever used their newfound wealth to leave Somalia, he laughed and shook his head. The only way they leave is when they die. Boyah, who claimed to have hijacked more than 25 ships, told me that he and his men did not discriminate, but would go after any ship hapless enough to wander into their sights. And despite their ostensible purpose of protecting Somali national waters, during the heat of the chase they paid no regard to international boundaries, pursuing their target until they caught it or it escaped them. Boyah separated his seafaring prey into the broad dichotomy of commercial and tourist ships. The commercial ships, identifiable by the cranes visible on their decks, were much slower and easier to capture. Boyah had gone after too many of these to remember: a lot was his most precise estimate. The basic strategy was crude in its simplicity. In attack groups spread across several small and speedy skiffs, Boyah and his men approached their target on all sides, swarming like a waterborne wolf pack. They brandished their weapons in an attempt to frighten the ships crew into stopping, and even fired into the air. If these scare tactics did not work, and if the target ship was capable of outperforming their outboard motors, the chase ended there. But if they managed to pull even with their target, they tossed hooked rope ladders onto the decks and boarded the ship. Instances of the crew fighting back were rare, and rarely effective, and the whole process, from spotting to capturing, took at most 30 minutes. Boyah guessed that only 20% to 30% of attempted hijackings met with success, for which he blamed speedy prey, technical problems and foreign naval or domestic intervention. The captured ship was then steered to a friendly port in Boyahs case, Eyl where guards and interpreters were brought from the shore to look after the hostages during the ransom negotiation. Once the ransom was secured often routed through banks in London and Dubai and parachuted like a special-delivery care package directly onto the deck of the ship it was split among all the concerned parties. Half the money went to the attackers, the men who actually captured the ship. A third went to the operations investors: those who fronted the money for the ships, fuel, tracking equipment and weapons. The remaining sixth went to everyone else: the guards ferried from shore to watch over the hostage crew, the suppliers of food and water, the translators (occasionally high-school students on their summer break), and even the poor and disabled in the local community, who received some as charity. Such largesse, Boyah told me, had made his merry band into Robin Hood figures among the residents of Eyl. Boyahs moral compass seemed to be divided between sea and shore; he warned me, half-jokingly, not to run into him in a boat, but, despite my earlier misgivings, assured me that he was quite harmless on land. Were not murderers, he said. Weve never killed anyone, we just attack ships. He insisted that he knew what he was doing was wrong, and, as evidence of his sincerity, relayed how he had just appeared on the local news radio station, Radio Garowe, to call a temporary ceasefire on all pirate activity. Though I was sceptical that he wielded the authority necessary to enforce his decree over a coastline stretching almost 1,600km, Boyah stressed that the decision had been

made by the central committee and woe to those who defied its orders. We will deal with them, Boyah promised. We will work with the government forces to capture them and bring them to jail. Subsequent events quickly proved that Boyahs radio statement was just so much background noise. Just days after his announced ceasefire, a pirate gang in the Gulf of Aden committed the first commercial hijacking of 2009, capturing a German liquid petroleum tanker along with her 13 crew members. The Central Committee has wreaked no vengeance on those responsible. Boyah himself had not gone on a mission for over two months, for which he had a twopronged explanation: I got sick, and became rich. His fortune made, Boyahs call to end hijackings came from a position of luxury that most others did not enjoy. I questioned Boyah on whether his ceasefire had been at least partially motivated by the Nato task force recently deployed to deal with him and his colleagues. No, he said, it has nothing to do with that. Its a moral issue. We started to realise that we were doing the wrong thing, and that we didnt have public support. Their public support, according to Boyah, had taken a plunge last summer when a delegation of local clan and religious leaders visited Eyl and declared to the local population that dealing with pirates was haram religiously forbidden. Throughout our conversation, Boyah had been gazing off into space between my questions, looking bored. Soon he grew restless, mumbling discontentedly as he glanced at the two oclock sun that the day is already over. I managed to slip in one final question, asking him for his most exhilarating high-seas chase. He brightened up and launched into the story of the Golden Nori, a Japanese chemical tanker he had captured in October 2007 about 14km off the northern Somali coast.Almost immediately after we had boarded the ship the US Navy surrounded it, said Boyah. The destroyer USS Porter was the first to respond; Boyahs memory, perhaps augmented with time, recalled seven naval vessels encircling him. The swiftness and gravity of this response nearly spooked Boyahs men into fleeing the ship and attempting an escape in their overmatched fishing skiffs. Fortunately for them, the Golden Nori was carrying volatile chemicals, including the extremely flammable compound benzene. With mirth lighting up his face, Boyah told me how the American ships were afraid to fire on the ship for fear of detonating its payload. The stand-off dragged on through November and into December. We ran out of food, Boyah said, and we almost abandoned the ship so we wouldnt start eating the crew. Attack helicopters whirring overhead, Boyah ordered the ship into the harbour at Bosaso, Puntlands most populous city. In case the Noris explosive cargo proved an insufficient deterrent, Boyah added the defensive screen provided by the citys civilian population.His perseverance paid off. After lengthy negotiations aboard an American vessel, a pirate delegation finally secured a generous ransom of $1.5m in exchange for releasing the Nori and its captive crew. As part of the deal, the American military guaranteed Boyah and his team safe passage off the hijacked ship. Puntland security forces, waiting on shore to arrest the brigands, could only watch as US Navy helicopters escorted the pirate skiffs to land and allowed the pirates to disembark. The Golden Nori was one of the first major commercial vessels hijacked in the Gulf of Aden, before the international community had truly become aware of the problem. During this period, foreign navies tended to give pirates a slap on the wrist: their weapons and boats were impounded or destroyed, and they were released. More recently, states have begun to use the international legal instruments available to them particularly a UN Security Council resolution permitting foreign entry into Somali

waters much more rigorously. Foreign warships are increasingly detaining and rendering suspected pirates to neighbouring countries to face justice. Boyah had experienced this approach as well. In April 2008, his gang seized a rare prize, a speedy French luxury yacht, Le Ponant, on route from the Seychelles to the Mediterranean. After delivering a ransom and freeing the hostages, French attack helicopters tracked the pirates inland to the village of Jariban. On the orders of President Nicolas Sarkozy, French commandos launched Operation Thalathine: special forces snipers disabled the pirates getaway vehicle and captured six of the brigands, subsequently flying them to Paris to face trial. Boyahs men had been captured or killed with increasing frequency in recent days (his brother was sitting in a Bosaso prison), but it did not matter. Imprisoning them was like trying to use a bailing bucket to drain the ocean: for each pirate captured by the authorities, there were dozens of desperate young men on shore ready to rush in and fill the void. Until there are alternative meaningful occupations on land, this is unlikely to change. Boyah had become visibly irritable, and the next pause in my questioning heralded the end of the interview. His bothersome task completed, he rose and started heading back to where the vehicles were parked. As he walked, Warsame casually sidled up to Boyah and slipped him a folded $100 bill; suddenly the puzzling incongruity between Boyahs irascible manner and his willingness to speak to me was perfectly clear. These pirates always need money, you know, to buy khat, said Warsame. Meanwhile, Boyah had leaked out ahead of the rest of us, bounding up the trail alone. Warsame and I gaped as he effortlessly cleared the metre-wide knee-high bramble patch separating the farm from the shoulder of the highway. With gigantic strides, he ran up the slope to the cars and waited impatiently as we slowly climbed up after him. It was time for his khat Source: guardian.co.uk; Jay Bahadur Supply of tankers vastly exceeds the need
Global demand for oil is rising and the price of crude is surging but companies in the business of shipping the valuable commodity by sea are suffering as the supply of tankers vastly exceeds the need for ships .For supertanker shipping companies, its a hangover from the prerecession boom in orders for new vessels, huge ships that take several years to build. The increase could be as much as 14 per cent for the worldwide fleet, which is predicted to reach 627 by the end of the year, compared with 548 last December. As the price to move oil plunges, and shipping companies see their profits evaporate, it is unclear whether oil producers or consumers will benefit. Competition among sellers of oil moved by supertanker, such as Saudi Arabia, might slightly shave prices to gain advantage against competitors, helping consumers, or could pocket the shipping savings. Respite for shipping companies will take time, according to the worlds leading supertanker company, Frontline Ltd., (FRO-N) which on Wednesday reported quarterly earnings and an 81-per-cent decline in profit. It is hard to see a strong recovery in the tanker market, Frontline said in its assessment. The weak tanker market mirrors difficulties in bulk shipping, the movement of commodities such as iron ore, coal and grain. The Baltic Dry Index, which tracks the price to ship bulk commodities, has fallen by two-thirds in the past year to depths not much higher than those during the worst of the financial crisis

in late 2008. Bulk shipping is also reeling from an oversupply of ships, most of them commissioned several years ago. Not all companies in the shipping business are hurting, however. Maersk AS, the largest company in container shipping, projects industry growth of close to 10 per cent this year. Container shippers, which move consumer goods as well as commodities such as lumber, account for about 60 per cent of global seaborne trading. Thats a swift recovery for containers. As of last December, there were nearly 5,000 container ships in the world and plans to build 600 more. A year earlier, at the end of 2009, global trade was so weak that about 500 container ships 10 per cent of the worlds fleet sat idle.The building boom in container ships has led Dynamar BV, a Dutch consultancy, to wonder whether the industrys giddiness will lead to the same oversupply as that affecting tankers and bulk vessels. Some [container shippers] already act as if the trees are growing up in the sky again, Dynamar said in a February report. And while shippers of oil, iron ore and other commodities are suffering, some smaller commodity segments are hot. Stena Bulk AB, a Swedish firm that owns 80 oil tankers, has expanded its offering by buying three ships to move liquefied natural gas, since theres more supply of LNG than ships to move it. Stena Bulk is actually turning away LNG customers, hoping to cash in on predicted record shipping rates this summer.I have never, in 40 years in tanker markets, had the pleasure of an oil company executive calling me up to say they are interested in chartering a ship, Ulf Ryder, Stena Bulk chief executive officer, told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday. For oil tankers, 2011 will be a challenging year for spot rates, those ships not chartered on longerterm deals, according to Teekay Corp., (TK-N) which is based in Bermuda and has corporate offices in Vancouver. The company services offshore oil platforms and has LNG ships and a fleet of 15 oil tankers. For its biggest ships Suezmax, which are smaller than supertankers the spot price is down to $18,670 (U.S.) a day, more than 40 per cent lower than $31,940 a year ago. The price to ship oil on the biggest supertankers, according to Frontline, is mired near the lowest point in a decade, with the spot-market rate at about $29,000 a day in the first quarter. The figure is down by a third from $45,000 a year ago and down two-thirds from roughly $90,000 in 2008. Teekay, earlier in May, said low prices eventually will be a positive for the longer-term balance of tanker supply and demand. Rising scrap steel prices might also be a help, combined with low shipping rates, Teekay added. [It] may lead to an increase in scrapping later in 2011. Source: Globe and Mail

Worlds first solar powered assisted vessel further developed Nippon Yusen Kabushiki Kaisha, Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd., the Monohakobi Technology Institute, and Nippon Kaiji Kyokai are to begin in June shipboard tests to verify the effects of a jointly developed hybrid power supply system for vessels. The innovative system will be installed on NYK Lines solar-power-assisted car carrier Auriga Leader (60,213 gross tons), which will also be fitted with a ballast-water management system and adapted to use low-sulfur fuel to further strengthen environmental measures. The power generation and endurance of the photovoltaic panels on Auriga Leader have been undergoing shipboard tests since the completion of the vessel on December 19, 2008. The tests have shown that providing a stable power supply from the photovoltaic panels is difficult because even a slight change in the weather has a significant influence on the amount of power generated. It was also found that attempting to make the solar

power system bigger to gain more output and to increase its dependency could result in problems with regard to stable operations due to fluctuations in the power supply. The hybrid power supply system has been studied since fiscal 2009.* NYK Line and MTI, with the aim of curtailing CO2 emissions, have pursued a stable onboard power supply in case an unstable renewable energy source such as solar power were to be adopted; KHI has been working to develop a hybrid power supply system for vessels through the use of its self-developed large nickel hydrogen batteries known as Gigacell; and ClassNK is supporting these projects as part of assistance provided through a joint research scheme based on industry demands. Charging and discharging a fluctuating amount of solar power generated by this hybrid power supply system will stabilize the supply to the vessels electrical power system. This will also minimize output fluctuations from the diesel power generator and secure a stable power supply. Shipboard tests on Auriga Leader will continue with the aim of achieving a stable power supply under harsh marine conditions through the combination of solar power generation and the hybrid power supply system, and the effects will be verified. Based on the experiment results, NYK Line and MTI will aim to develop an even larger solar power generation system for vessels, while KHI will seek to commercialize the hybrid power supply system for vessels. NYK Line, KHI, MTI, and ClassNK will continue to respond proactively to environmental issues through further innovations in technology. * The hybrid power supply system was selected as a subsidized project by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) under the Support for Technology Development for Curtailing CO2 from Marine Vessels program. Particulars of Auriga Leader Length Overall: 199.99 meters Breadth: 32.26 meters Depth: 34.52 meters Capacity: 6,200 cars Deadweight Tonnage: 18,758 tons Gross Tonnage: 60,213 tons Builder: Kobe Shipyard, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd AKE argues against armed guards on ships
On the day a South Korean ship was attacked by pirates, the Security Threats to Korean Business Operating Overseas conference heard evidence in support of intelligence-led protection and unarmed solutions to piracy from UK-based risk consultancy AKE Group. During the gathering, of the biggest names in the countrys onshore business and shipping, the 75,000-tonne Hanjin-owned Tianjin signalled an SOS to its owners in Seoul and the Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs: it was under attack by pirates in the Gulf of Aden. According to AKE, the incident reflects an increase in piracy against South Korean vessels and highlights growing support for armed solutions, as well as demonstrating the practical non-lethal methods that actually defused this attack. The AKE Group argued against armed guards. Non-lethal techniques use intelligence to understand the modus operandi of pirates and their capabilities, said an AKE statement. Vessel hardening with wire and improvised tools, safe rooms to protect crew, security training and contingency plans come at minimal cost and promote risk-awareness. The most successful maritime security techniques boil down to economics and risk mitigation, saving lives and saving money. AKE also suggested that using the armed guards advocated by many is also likely to be counterproductive in the long-term. Bringing more weapons into the region will, intelligence analysis suggests, make pirates invest ransoms into more powerful weaponry, escalating the use of force and ultimately increasing fatalities. Invalid weapon licences, legal problems or accidental deaths will hurt the reputation of companies found at fault. The pirates attempt to hijack the Tianjin failed after the captain ordered all 20 crew to hide in a bullet-proof citadel inside the ship. Source: Baird

Trucks lose, ships win in warmer Arctic Global warming will have a devastating effect on roads in the Arctic but open up tantalising routes for shipping, according to a study published on Sunday in the specialist journal Nature Climate Change. As sea ice continues to melt, accessibility by sea will increase, but the viability of an important network of roads that depend on freezing temperatures is threatened by a warming climate, said Scott Stephenson of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Previous research has already pinpointed the Arctic as one of the worlds most climatesensitive areas. Four consecutive years of shrinking summer sea ice have fired talk of new, cost-saving ocean links between Europe and Asia and prospects of a scramble to exploit the regions wealth of oil, gas and precious minerals. The new study is the first to look in detail at the implications of this for transporters. Stephensons team devised a computer model about accessibility to the Arctic and combined it with climate simulations used by the US National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). The simulations are based on expected temperature increases of 2.0-3.4 degrees Celsius (3.6-6.2 degrees Fahrenheit) overall in the Arctic by 2050, with an even greater rise in winter of 4-6 C (7.2-10.8 F). The big casualty will be temporary roads that are built on ice, for they will become unstable or swampy as the mercury rises. These routes play a vital part in providing access to remote areas in the eight countries Canada, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United States that have land within the Arctic Circle. By mid-century, between 11 percent and 82 percent of areas that are currently accessible by roads in these countries will be out of reach, says the study. In winter, Russia will lose road access to 618,000 square kilometres (239,000 square miles), a total bigger than the area of France, while Canada would lose access to 400,000 sq. kms (154,000 sq. miles), which is greater than the area of Germany. The fall in both cases is around 13 percent over Arctic areas that are road-accessible today. Giving a comparison, the researchers said a road trip from Yellowknife, capital of Canadas Northwest Territories, to the distant community of Bathurst Inlet that takes 3.8 days today would need 6.5 days by mid-century. Warmings winner, though, would be sea traffic. So-called Type A vessels commercial ships which have limited ice-breaking capability would be able to use three of the four major shipping routes from July to September. For instance, ships could sail from Rotterdam Europe directly to Alaska; from Amderma in northwestern Russia to the Russian Far East port of Provideniya; and from the Canadian port of Churchill to Murmansk in Russia. This will be good news for global shipping interests, who stand to reap savings by moving cargo through these passages rather than through the Panama Canal, Suez Canal or the Strait of Malacca, Stephenson was quoted in a UCLA press release as saying. The exception would be the fabled Northwest Passage, which is not expected to become fully passable for the entire summer by that date. Source: news.yahoo.com