Keppel Corporation has underlined its plan to contribute to the community by raising $200,000 with a golf tournament for 31 beneficiaries under the President’s Challenge 2008.

Forming part of its 40th anniversary celebrations, Keppel’s charity golf tournament saw more than 140 business associates swing their clubs in way of an honourable donation towards the Singaporean social service sector.

Choo Chiau Beng, Senior Executive Director of Keppel Corporation and CEO of Keppel Offshore & Marine presented the $200,000 cheque to Tan Eng Beng, Secretary to the President of Singapore at the Keppel Group Charity Golf Tournament, held at the Tampines Course of the Tanah Merah Country Club.

Chan Soo Sen, Director of Keppel Corporation and chairman of the golf tournament’s organising committee said that through the fund-raising event, “we are happy to do our part to help the less fortunate through the President’s Challenge.”

Eitzen Maritime Services ASA (EMS) has bought Argentine ship supply company Claudio Pollon SA for $250.000 in a deal which helps to consolidate EMS’ position in the South American market.

According to a press statement, Claudio Polon had sales of $1.6 million and a net profit of $100.000 in 2007. The company operates in the port of San Lorenzo which is near to Rosario, the second biggest city in Argentina.

According to EMS, the port is a prime mover of all the grains, including soya, which Argentina presently exports. Argentina is the largest soya producer in the world for bio-diesel purposes. San Lorenzo has an average of 12 ships a day loading soya and Claudio Pollon is the only ship supply company in this port.

EMS said of the deal: “This acquisition fits well into EMS strategy to develop a global maritime service provider within the ship supply and the ship management segments. The acquisition is a natural supplement to the mature acquisitions made in 2007 and 2008 and will strengthen EMS’ presence in South America.”

EMS took the ship supply market by surprise recently when it bought the Dubai headquartered Seven Seas Shipchandlers for $115m. The move which was part of the company’s plans to have a global approach to ship supply, was hot on the heels of an earlier acquisition – of Provimar in southern Europe. This deal gave the company penetration in the Mediterranean, the Iberian Peninsula and North and South America. The Seven Seas acquisition also gave the group a strong presence throughout the UAE, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait and Djibouti. The next obvious area to look at could be the Far East.

“We have a very good presence in Singapore where we have had good and increasing sales over the past year and then we need a little bit of time to digest this acquisition which is a big one. We will continue to see where we should have a presence to have a global approach,” said Annette Malm Justad, CEO of Eitzen Maritime Services.

BW Gas will continue to operate its LPG fleet independently of any pool arrangement because of concerns over possible action by regional regulators like the European Commission against pooling arrangements. But it has not ruled out further partnerships with other companies as long as it is done in a manner which is not at risk of regulatory challenge.

The move follows the decision by both BW Gas and Exmar to terminate their participation in their respective pools. BW Gas said it would withdraw from the Exmar-operated MidSize Pool while Exmar will withdraw from the BW Gas-operated VLGC pool.

Andreas Sohmen-Pao, Vice-Chairman of BW Gas, told Ship Management International that the decision to withdraw from the pools was not taken overnight. He also indicated that it was not linked to BW Gas’ recent decision to withdraw from talks over the possible sale of its LPG fleet.

He said: “Somewhat independent of the sale process, we felt it was prudent for us to manage our ships independently rather than on a pool basis. With continuous question marks in the EU over how they look at pooling we felt it was prudent to operate our ships independently. The fact of the matter is that the pools didn’t have any anti-competitive effect because if you look at how weak the market was in LPG over the past 12 months, it demonstrates one is not using the pools to have unfair gain or advantage.

“Sometimes we feel the regulators don’t necessarily look at the results in terms of the market. They look at their own criteria and it was not a risk we wanted to take,” he told SMI.

Dockwise subsidiary Dockwise Shipping has entered into contracts worth $40 million with the Spanish naval shipyard Navantia for the shipment of two Canberra-class amphibious helicopter carriers (LHD) and with the Russian naval shipyard Zvezda for the movement of two nuclear powered submarines.

Navantia, located in Ferrol, Spain, a naval shipyard, is building the two LHD’s for the Australian Navy. The hull of the vessels and its outfitting will, to a large extend be completed by the Spanish yard. The final construction, outfitting and commissioning will be performed by Australian contractors. In this arrangement, the transportation to Melbourne on the deck of a semi submersible transport vessel is the preferred option. To accommodate the 231 metre long LHD’s, Dockwise and Navantia have agreed the use of the Blue Marlin for each of the two projects. Execution of the contracts will take place in 2012 and 2014.

Naval shipyard Zvezda, located in Bolshoi Kamen, Russia, will dismantle the two nuclear powered submarines. This project is sponsored by the Canadian Government under the Global Partnership Programme, originally established by the G8 to stop the proliferation of weapons and materials of mass destruction. The submarines, located in Kamchatka, form part of a larger number of nuclear powered submarines to be dismantled by Zvezda. Dockwise will involve nuclear experts in this project in which safety and security have absolute priority. Execution of the contract will take place in 2009.

The combined value of the contracts is almost $40 million. Dockwise’s Chief Executive Officer André Goedée, said:”Throughout the years Dockwise has been engaged in projects for different international navies, with a large variety of naval equipment involved. Mobilising or demobilising military naval equipment on its own power is, for different reasons, not always possible . The capacity of the Dockwise vessels often allows for creative and unorthodox solutions, apart from other arguments such as safety, security, reduction of wear and tear and predetermined arrival targets. The contribution of these contracts once again indicates the importance of the market diversity on which the Dockwise strategy is built.”

Greek ship owners once again dominated the S&P markets by acquiring a total of 146 second hand vessels woth $6.8 billion in the seven months to the end of July, according to data compiled by shipbrokers Allied Shipbroking.

Of them, 86 were dry bulk carriers, 51 were tankers and nine were container ships. These figures place the country’s maritime industry in the top spot for second hand sales, while at the same time point to the continued large popularity of dry bulk carriers as freight rates continue to rise, reported the Hellenic Shipping News Agency.

On a global basis, the value of second hand deals reached almost $25bn, accounting for a total of 819 ships of 38.3 million tons. Dry bulk carriers were the most popular with 416 of them, of 16.4m tonnes and with a value of $12bn changing hands. A total of 272 tankers of 19.3m tons and worth $8.9bn changed hands during the period.

China was in second place, with the country’s shipping companies acquiring 67 ships worth $2.2bn. Of this total, 28 were bulk carriers while 36 were tankers. German ship owners took third place with purchases of 38 second hand ships in total. Container ships were the most popular with 18 being added, while owners took an additional 14 tankers and six dry bulk carriers.

On the contrary, new building order activity hasn’t been that intense with Allied placing the total number of orders at 119 vessels, worth $8.2bn. This compares with 303 ships of 25.3m tons and worth $16.8bn during the same 2007 period.

Teekay is the first shipping company in the world to be certified as complying with the requirements of the Tanker Officer Training Standard (TOTS), a programme set up by INTERTANKO to establish and evaluate tanker officer competence across the industry.

Teekay put its SCOPE (Seafarer Competence for Operational Excellence) competence management system up for this audit when INTERTANKO authorised DNV and other IACS members to conduct external audits of shipping companies working in accordance with TOTS standards.

Designed by Teekay to help seafarers enhance their skills and progress their career development, SCOPE improves individual performance by addressing training needs which have been identified through a full assessment of competencies. The system gained full certification from DNV in April 2004.

Teekay was also the first shipping company to have the LNG training section of its competence management system accredited as being in compliance with SIGTTO requirements in December 2006.

During DNV’s TOTS audit of Teekay, SCOPE was certified as fulfilling all the requirements for TOTS compliance. Verification involved examination of training records, content of courses and assessments. SCOPE fulfilled all elements 1-4 of TOTS.

“Both SCOPE and TOTS are important programmes that provide evaluation tools to ensure companies in this industry are meeting high standards when it comes to the safe and effective transportation and transfer of oil, gas and chemicals,” notes John Adams, Managing Director, Teekay Marine Services. “We are very proud to be the first shipping company to receive the TOTS certification. It is a testament to the high level of expertise of our people and our systems.”

TOTS was launched to help ensure tanker officers’ competencies for ship-board operations and specific tanker types such as crude, product and chemical tankers. This is done via a core competency-based training system working through a practical, experience-based authenticated, assessed and verifiable system, and goes over and above current minimum requirements. The aim is that this will be accepted as the norm within the industry of a competent tanker officer, and will provide an alternative to sea time or calendar years for assessing time in rank and time with the company.

Peter Swift, Managing Director, INTERTANKO said: “We welcome Teekay’s accreditation in meeting TOTS requirements, and hope that others within the tanker industry will similarly adopt TOTS as providing industry standards for training and competence measurement.”

Only months after graduation ceremonies were held on campuses across the nation, approximately 85% of 2008 graduates with merchant marine licenses from the United States Merchant Marine Academy and six state maritime academies have found employment afloat in the maritime industry or in the U.S. military, according to data released by the Maritime Administration today.

“This data indicates that the job market for merchant marine officers remains robust. There is a growing, worldwide demand for fully-trained merchant marine officers and licensed mariners. Excellent training combined with ongoing global trade expansion will continue to make the graduates of U.S. maritime colleges among the most qualified and employable mariners in the world,” said US Maritime Administrator Sean Connaughton

Total employment for 2008 licensed graduates is already more than 95%. This number includes those who have found shoreside employment in the maritime industry. One of the academies, Great Lakes in Traverse City, Michigan, has placed 100% of its 2008 graduates in maritime afloat employment.

The Maritime Administration operates the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy and provides funding and training ships to Maine, Massachusetts, Texas, California, Great Lakes Maritime Academies, and the State University of New York Maritime College.

Braemar Seascope Limited and Tullett Prebon PLC have announced a joint venture into the Forward Freight Agreements market. The two firms will today join forces to form TP Braemar, a joint arrangement that will broke FFAs from a base at Braemar’s London office. The new group says it will employ four FFA brokers to work on the wet FFA market.

Denis Petropoulos, joint managing director of Braemar commented: “This is an initial step to building a presence in the rapidly growing FFA market. Tullett Prebon’s wide experience in this and other derivatives markets will be invaluable to achieving this goal. We expect to expand the activity to cover other areas of the FFA market, including the dry markets in due course.”

Andrew Polydor, head of EMEA energy at Tullett Prebon, commented: “We already have the team in place and believe we can significantly increase our market presence with the assistance of Braemar’s shipbroking expertise. There is a growing market appetite for FFAs and we intend to be a major player in the market place.”

The Joint Negotiating Group (JNG) has rejected a demand from ITF, made on Monday 11 August, that the ports and Black Sea coastal waters of Georgia should be declared an area of warlike operations under Article 17 of the International Bargaining Forum (IBF) Framework Agreement.

Following consultation between the JNG members and with national shipowner organisations, the demand was rejected on the grounds that the recently agreed ceasefire has removed any possible threat to ships that might visit Georgian ports. The situation will remain monitored closely and the JNG expects ITF will repeat their demand should the situation deteriorate.

The latest information is that a ceasefire has been agreed in Georgia itself as well as in the coastal waters and the possible threats to seafarers serving on ships entering the ports of Georgia has been removed. JNG secretary and IMEC secretary general, David Dearsley said: “In view of this situation, and providing such a ceasefire remains in effect, the JNG does not consider that it would be appropriate or necessary to institute an area of warlike operations in accordance with Article 17 of the IBF Framework TCC.

“Should the situation deteriorate in any way that affects the health and safety of seafarers serving on ships to which IBF Agreements apply, the JNG will certainly be prepared to review the situation again.”

Mr Dearsley explained that for members who may operate ITF-approved agreements that are non-IBF, the areas designated as warlike operations areas are those listed by the Lloyd’s Joint War Committee. This list numbers more than 20 such areas where war bonuses and other restrictions apply, and this now includes Georgia.

The only area currently designated under Article 17 of the IBF Agreement is the northern coast of Somalia within 12 miles offshore.

The JNG is the employers’ body that negotiates agreements with ITF under the framework of the IBF. The members of the JNG are IMEC, the International Seafarers Employers Group and the Korean Shipowners Association.

US merchant navy cadets can now undertake vital sea training onboard Hapag-Lloyd box ships under an innovative agreement signed between Washington and the shipping line.

The accord, signed by Maritime Administrator Sean Connaughton and John Murray CEO of Hapag-Lloyd USA, paves the way for the training programme to start from October.

“Cadets will receive excellent training from skilled maritime professionals on a variety of seagoing vessels,” said Sean Connaughton. “Hapag-Lloyd should be commended for their commitment to these American students.”

Cadets must carry out part of their training on working vessels if they are to qualify as licensed mariners. US maritime academies hope that training on the world’s largest liner shipping company will open new opportunities and experiences for their maritime students – especially at a time of global seafarer shortages.

Captain Eric York Wallischeck, Assistant Superintendent for Plans, Assessment and Public Affairs at the US Merchant Marine Academy, said the scheme with Hapag-Lloyd will “give our midshipmen a chance to sail on some of the more technologically-advanced vessels, and provide greater opportunities for training routines with our midshipmen.

“We expect them to acquire greater professional exposure to state of the art vessels and more of an international perspective on the shipping business than they might otherwise get just by sailing on American carriers,” he added.

Captain Wallischeck said he hoped to see more American mariners on some of the LNG ships serving the US, both for security reasons and for mariner experience.