OIL TANKERS and the free market don't mix. While the exact cause of last week's disaster in the Shetands Is yet unknown, the big picture is clear. have deliberately run down voyage-by-voyage on the spot it been in tanker build ing after the oil shocks of the an ageing world fleet and substantial overcapacity, driving down freight rates and enre-registered in Cheap third world and East European ratings are hired, despite inability to speak the tion is available for cash on the invest in new vessels. With insurance companies picking up the tab for any spills, operators have every incentive to run rustbuckets into the ground -sometimes literally. At the curpresent world tanker fleet would last another 200 years. week's tragedy. registered but AmericanFilipinos, Greeks and Poles, ilIn January 1992, crew wrote to the International Transport Workers Federation paid and the ship was inade. Maritime Services as 'a quality operator are simply bollocks', told Socialist Outlook. It even sub-contracts responsibility for running many of its ships to specialist ship management B+H is essentially an 'asset play' outfit, formed to cash in on the temporary boom in secondhand ship prices in the late eighties. The main cause of the bul market was Norways recently abolished K/S syschasersu rushed to buy up sometimes poor quality vessels, often prices have now crashed. B+f are losing money almostas fast as the Braer is losing crude.
The Braer was working for Hida rested to be indee by promptly arresting a B+H ship discharging at one of its refineries as security for its lost Independent" owners like B+H own 64 per cent of the panies control 18 percent, with neer incuains Braer, is over fifteen years old. Some 1,563 vessels of this type and structural effects of actual tank vessel accidents is so inadequate that any assessment of design alternatives will produce results that are dependent on the chosen assumptions and accident criteria - artificial rather than actual criteria.' still in service were built in or before 1977; 464 were over twenty years old, exceeding the usual maximum design life Become a Socialist Outlook hype about double hulls -providing two skins for additional protection. Indeed, the tion drawn up by the International Maritime Organisation will make this compulsory for all new tankers after July this shipbrokers Fearleys - a top last year: Double hull tankers that crackings increase with Modern tankers are generalment of carrying capacity), the Braer is medium-sized comriers) and 330,000-plus dwt ULCCs (ultra large crude caradded, will protect against cargo tank holing only at low speed. And the risk of Icakage into void spaces increases the chance of catastrophic exAuthoritative An easy oi17 celes tive study of 17 different tanker designs commissioned by the US government in 1991 came out for double hulls, but "Knowledge regarding the precise cir'Knowledge regarding the precise circumstances cumstances and structural effects of actual tank vessel accidents is so inadequate that any assessment of design altematives will produce results that - - - - - - 7 are dependent on the chosen ¡ assumptions and accident ¡ criteria - artificial rather than reportedly failed after water got into its fuel tanks. There is how this happened. scrupulous suppliers commonly contaminate fuel to inSo what should the left be saying? As long as it is necesShipping is unavoidably a timated 80 per cent of maritime accidents are down to human Exxon Valdez being drunk on But it is necessary to rigidly French oil giant Elf Aquitaine unilaterally implements its own tight safety vetting procedure for chartered vessels in place of the standard industry out of business in the last decade as the provision of The French covernment statons two targe salvage tugs, Abeille Lan. guedoc and Flandre, off its north-west coast; South Africa largest salvage units, Wolraad name synonymous with shipwreck everywhere, it seems).
France and South Africa also force laden tankers to stay further off the coast than a master looking for a fast passage might choose, increasing the amount of time to mount a rescue.
'Coffin ships'
What seafarers call 'coffin ships' have to go. While the Braer was making the headlines, 17 Russian and Greek seafarers perished in their lifeboat after abandoning 30-year-old Coty 1, a 4,000 dwt Panamanian flag bulk carrier taxis a consignment or cu ment from Greece to Sicily, in Lloyd's Register statistics show that 250 were killed in 34