"I hope to see broad participation from member companies based in or close to Dubai where the meeting takes place on the 31 October."
Director's Log
Welcome to the August edition of the OCIMF Newsletter. August typically provides a break in the committee and IMO programme and allows time to progress staff work on the OCIMF work programme.
Among the items being worked on are production of a data-mining tool to allow statistics and trends to be easily extracted from the SIRE database. A prototype has been developed and will be demonstrated at the forthcoming SIRE Focus Group and General Purposes Committee (GPC) meetings. An OVID working group has been busy producing additional inspection variants which, once completed will give us a suite of 25 bespoke inspection variants covering all offshore support vessels in common use.
The shipping industry has jointly been assessing proposals from the European Commission to introduce a framework for monitoring the C02 emissions from shipping trading to ports within the European Union, see Emerging MRV Requirements for further details.
We continue to work to implement the Strategy agreed by the Executive Committee in November 2012. We have been principally focused on managing changes to the working structure with the objective of improving engagement with members in their home regions, see Raj Shetty's Q&A for further details. We will run the first of the regional panel meetings in October in the Middle East linked to the GPC and will take the learnings gained at that event to fashion the programme for 2014. I hope to see broad participation from member companies based in or close to Dubai where the meeting takes place on the 31 October.
September at the IMO opens with the 59th meeting of the Navigation and Routing Committee. The agenda items of greatest interest to OCIMF are e-navigation, the revision of recommendation for use Deep Sea Pilots in the North Sea and in the Baltic and ECDIS. OCIMF will also introduce an information paper advocating proactive use of Voyage Data Recorders as a navigational best practice.
If you would like to comment on anything included here in this month's edition of the newsletter we would be delighted to hear from you, just email
FSRU Toscana
Offshore LNG Toscana (OLT) joined the OCIMF in May this year. OLT is set up from the association of E.ON Group (46.79%), Iren Group (46.79%), Golar Offshore Toscana Limited (3.73%) and OLT Energy Toscana SpA (2.69%), and was created to realise the regasification terminal project which envisages a floating unit positioned 22 km offshore the Tuscan coast.
The LNG regasification Terminal of OLT Offshore LNG Toscana, which set off from Dubai in mid-June, has arrived and been installed 12 nautical miles off the Tuscan coast, Italy. On the 22 of August the hook-up of FSRU Toscana was completed safely.
A period of testing with LNG onboard the FSRU has begun. It's estimated that testing activities will be completed in around three months. The arrival of the first LNG carrier to start the first gas in and cool-down operation is scheduled for the end of August. Offloading of LNG will be in side by side. The starting of commercial activity is therefore planned by the last quarter of 2013.The Terminal, once operative, will have a regasification capacity of 3.75 billion cubic meters a year, about 4% of the national demand.
The gas will be transferred onshore through a 36.5 km long pipeline operated and managed by Snam Rete Gas, of which 29.5 km are at sea and 7 km on dry land.
New guidelines in the works
Working under the direction of the Ports and Terminals Committee, the Competency Assurance Guidelines (CAG) working group has been developing guidelines for the competence assessment of Mooring Masters, Loading Masters and Lightering Masters.
Current industry guidelines do not address multiple competencies associated with this advisory role, which includes ship and cargo handling operations during a vessel's port stay. The Competency Assurance Guidelines document is not intended to be a training manual, but is provided to assist members in identifying competency gaps so that individual training plans can be developed. The WG is chaired by Paul Tait (Chevron) and is supported by members from BP, ConocoPhillips, ENOC, Ecopetrol, Shell, Petrobras, IMT.
The working group has been making significant progress since commencing the task in October 2012 and expects to have the document ready for publication early in 2014.
Ahmed AlShawi (ENOC), Romulo Prazeres (Petrobras), Kevin Coelho (Shell), Dana Woodruff (ConocoPhillips), Paul Tait (Chevron), Mike O Neill (technical writer), Will Doolittle (BP) and Raj Shetty (OCIMF). Manuel (Ecopetrol) attended via videoconference.
Emerging MRV Requirements
The European Commission recently released a proposal that will create an EU-wide legal framework for collecting and reporting verified annual data on C02 emissions from all large ships (over 5000 gross tons) that use EU ports, irrespective of where the ships are registered. This process is commonly referred to as monitoring, verification, and reporting (MRV).
Ship owners will be required to monitor, record and report the verified amount of C02 emitted by their large ships on voyages to, from and between EU ports. Owners will also be required to provide certain other information, such as data to determine the ships' energy efficiency.
A document of compliance issued by an independent verifier will have to be carried on board ships and will be subject to inspection by Member State authorities. It is proposed that the rules apply from 1 January 2018.
OCIMF has been watching emerging MRV proposals from the US, the EU, and IMO closely.
Over the summer OCIMF have taken part in a joint working group led by INTERTANKO, alongside representatives from shipping companies and industry experts in vessel performance monitoring and reporting. The group has been gathering real data from across a significant sample of the world tanker fleet in order to develop a best practice MRV program for tankers to proactively present to regulators.
As summer winds down we expect MRV to get more attention in Brussels and again in IMO next year.
OVID Courses
OVID has had a fantastic 2013 with over 300 inspectors becoming accredited, or retaining their accreditation, following the new inspector and refresher training courses held in the first half of the year. As summer draws to a close, the team is readying themselves for a similar number passing through the classrooms during the second half of the course schedule.
Due to unprecedented demand a second week of courses has been added in Kuala Lumpur, so the course schedule for the second half of the year is now as follows:
New inspector courses:
- Doha : 24-26 September
- Kuala Lumpur : 23-25 October and 28-30 October
Refresher courses:
- Abu Dhabi : 29-30 September
- Kuala Lumpur : 21-22 October and 31 October - 1 November
- London : November TBA
The new inspector courses are fully booked, and we are taking applications for the waiting list. We still have a small number of refresher course spaces for both the Abu Dhabi course, and the second Kuala Lumpur course click this link for more information,
The dates for the London refresher courses will be announced in the OVID newsletter.
If you have any queries regarding OVID accreditation, please contact
Seatrade Middle East Workboat & Offshore Show
We will be at the Seatrade workboat show from 30 September - 2 October. You can visit us on stand E51 to see what's new with the Offshore Vessel Inspection Database (OVID). In addition OCIMF will be hosting a reception, with David Cotterell giving the welcoming remarks.
We are also hosting a two day OVID refresher course to coincide with the event as well as an OVID workshop, click here for details.
If you would like to attend either the OVID refresher or the OVID workshop please contact Sean Nicholson at
Raj Shetty Q&A
Why is the working structure changing?
Last year, the Executive Committee set the OCIMF strategy to 2020.The work to define the strategy included a membership consultation to clearly understand what members expected from the forum. A clear message received was that the majority recognised a need for greater regional engagement opportunities. In response, the strategy included the formation of regional panels as a platform for the broader engagement of members. Building on the success of the terminal forums we have broadened the scope to include topics of high interest beyond terminal matters.
What is the new structure?
Four regional panels have been created to cover the geographic spread of our membership, with the aim of providing unrestricted access to all members within each region.
The regional panels will meet in regional shipping hubs, namely Houston, London, Dubai and Singapore and the timing coordinated with principal committee meetings in the same locations to add efficiency. The exception to meeting in hub locations is when a strategic issue is identified in a particular location that may be highlighted and supported by an OCIMF event.
Regional panels provide members with the opportunity to participate in forum activities in their home region, firstly to understand and discuss the broad spectrum of OCIMF activities, and secondly to capture the emerging issues and challenges that may form the basis for further work and to encourage more members to engage and participate.
When is the first regional panel, and how can I attend?
The first regional panel is planned for the 31 October 2013 in Dubai.
Nominated member representatives will be notified of the event by email, and participants will need to register for the event. Arrangements for the meeting will be determined by the number of registrations received; hence registration is a pre-requisite for attendance.
The regional panel calendar will be published well in advance of the event and further notices promulgated through our monthly newsletter.
If you are interested in learning more please contact
Next month our Offshore Marine Advisor, Sean Nicholson, will be answering your questions. Email your questions to